


52 first-drafts in 52 weeks

by DragonsPhoenix



Category: Doctor Who, Newford - Charles de Lint, Original Work, Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-05-12 19:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 44
Words: 35,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5678173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonsPhoenix/pseuds/DragonsPhoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I want to write more original fic and yet I keep getting drawn back to fanfic. So, for 2016 I'll take a stab at each of these prompts, one a week. </p><p>Read at your own peril. I'm mostly posting them here so I can keep track of them and look back at my progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Most of the chapters are original 1st drafts. Exceptions:
> 
>   * Chapter 17: deLint's Newford featuring the Crow Girls 
>   * Chapter 21 / Safer: Dr. Who & Torchwood 
> 


NB: I had notes for what I wanted to write but forgot to bring them to my writing session. So I was working from memory and pretty distracted because we more chat than write.  
NB: Also, first draft, not edited. 

As Jack jogged up to the intersection, the rain started drizzling down, dragging up the humidity as if DC wasn’t fucking muggy enough. At oh five hundred, there were few cars even in sight much less in the street and so he jogged on against the light. The house would be empty when he got back. He wondered if he should have stopped at Starbucks for a coffee but he’d most likely spill it over himself as he raced back to the house. Damned coffee maker. It’d been two weeks and he still didn’t know how to work the fucking thing. How had could it be to brew a single cup of coffee? There wouldn’t be any coffee at the office, not at the hour he got in. The receptionist - damned woman - didn’t arrive until the dot of nine. That was the problem with women, no staying power. They got frou-frou shit into their heads and damned if you could ever reason with them again. 

Babs had been like that. Probably still was. “I’m not happy,” she’d said.

“Happy?” Shit. Only damned women cared about being happy. “Hit Lord &Taylor. Spend the shit out of my credit card. That usually seems to cheer you up.”

She’d done that thing where she tightened her lips but didn’t say what was wrong. She thought he didn’t know when she was pulling that shit, but she was wrong. “I need something to do.”

Do? She’d spent twenty-three years sitting on her ass while he slaved at the office and now she wanted something to do? 

“I mean it, Jack. With the kids in school, well, there just no meaning in my life.”

Meaning. Another woman’s word. Who the fuck needed meaning? You did what you had to and got through shit. But no, women needed meaning, women needed to be frigging happy. Women needed to join fucking artist colonies and carve the shit out of perfectly good pieces of marble. As if there weren’t enough frou-frou teapots in the world.

“I’m leaving you,” she’d said. He’d laughed. Where the fuck would she go? But she’d meant it. She’d gotten a damned good lawyer too. Took half his dough and now here he was working twelve hour days just to make ends meet. Not that the extra hours meant extra cash. Fucking managerial position. Still, here he was working his ass off while she got in touch with her inner something-or-other. 

He jogged past the Davis’ backyard. Fuckers never did mow back there. What the fuck was he doing letting his wife grow a goddamned vegetable garden where everyone could see it? What the fuck had happened to community standards? Couldn’t he keep his damned wife in line? 

Jack turned through a break in the fence and his feet pounded against the sidewalk, past the Davis’ and up to his own door. The porch light made a small indentation against the darkness behind the windows. The wooden steps echoed hollowly as he jogged up to the porch. Off in the far end, barely lit by the scrawny porch light, he saw the cat.

“Oh God damn fuck it all. Get the fuck out of here.”

The cat hunkered down, refusing to move. Jack thought about dragging its ass off the fucking porch and tossing the damned cat into the rain. Jack looked out at the rain, pouring down now, and back at the cat. Shit.  
The left-over Chinese was two days old but there was beef left. Jack dumped it in a bowl, cold, and put it out on the porch. The cat didn’t move so he shut the door, leaving the bowl out for the cat, as he took his shower and prepped for work. When he came back out, the cat was waiting just by the door. It backed off a bit as he stepped out. He opened the door wider. “Come on in.”

The cat dashed past him, into the house, and vanished under the couch. Jack dumped his briefcase on the coffee table. The cat peered out from underneath the couch. Jack fell down into a chair and stared down at the cat. He sat there for ten minutes before he pulled out a pen and paper and started making a list: cat food, litter, box. Bed, a cat would need a bed, something to sleep on.


	2. The Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts (which don't necessarily get used):
> 
>   * rising to a challenge 
>   * "if I had imagined myself in an orange gown drifting through space like a figure on a church wall" - from Explanation by Wallace Stevens. 
>   * unexpected attack - I try to use emotions or issues I'm working through and my aunt had been cruel over the holidays 
>   * mecca 
> 

> 
> This is chock full of my family and our issues. Both my mother, Ruth Ann, and my aunt will lash out cruelly when upset. I may be acting like the Golux here (from The Thirteen Clocks; he invents a story and then believes it) but I recall my mother saying she had two uncles who were verbally abusive (calling her ugly, stupid) when she was growing up. I'm trying to explore whether my mother and aunt had to pass on that cruelty by lashing out themselves at the next generation (me). I think this answer's a bit simplistic. When I got into the same headspace I see in my aunt. it took 2 1/2 years of therapy to get my head straight. So I guess this is wish fulfillment, what I wish my mother - who did not go to college because her parents were saving to send the eldest son - could have had.

Dorothy, cutting up venison on the small table that served for counter space, filled up the kitchen barely leaving enough room for Ruth Ann to squeeze in. “Momma, I don’t get this math. We’re supposed to reduce these fractions to their …” She opened the textbook to the page she’d marked and read. “… lowest common denominators. Do you know what six over sixteen would reduce to?”

Dorothy glanced at the text and shook her head. “You know I don’t have time for that nonsense. You bring this to your uncles next weekend when we’re up to the farm. It’s not like they have anything better to do.”

Uncle Tommy and uncle Art had moved off grandma Lucy’s farm but were back all the time for meals. Ruth Ann didn’t like asking them for help especially with something like math. She preferred to ask grandma Lucy who’d put herself through college and had been a teacher before she’d gotten married. Grandma would explain it so she could understand and wouldn’t make her feel stupid, not like her uncles. “Not like a girl’s gonna need higher learnin’. All she’s gotta do is get a fella to marry her.” 

“Now Art, look at her. What boy’s gonna marry a girl with a face like a horse? Or one with a dress that’s practically dragging on the ground?”

That wasn’t true about the dress. It was well above her ankles but it was a couple of sizes too big having been donated to her after cousin Milly grew out of it. After some of the girls at school had teased her, Ruth Ann had begged momma to take up the hem just a bit. “At the rate you’re growing? We’d just be tossing it in the trash tomorrow if we did a fool thing like that. You should be grateful not to be gussed up in a gunny sack.” 

“Ruth Ann. Ruth Ann!” Momma was snapping her fingers at Ruth Ann’s face. “I swear, your head would fall off if it wasn’t tacked on. Go on, make yourself useful. Check that your brothers’ beds are made.” 

That meant make the boy’s beds. Cleanliness was next to Godliness but boys weren’t expected to be all that clean. “Yes ma’am.”

Her homework remained unfinished and she didn’t hand it in the next day. All through math, she stared at the teacher thinking that Mrs. Miller was going to tell her that she was stupid, worthless. The bell rang. As the other students dodged around each other to be first out the door, Ruth Ann slowly approached the desk. She could ask grandma Lucy over the weekend but grandma would be busy with Momma and might not have the time. Anyway, that was two more nights worth of homework she’d miss. Ruth Ann didn’t want to ask, most likely Mrs. Miller’d be disappointed in her, but grandma Lucy said, “The Lord helps those that help themselves” and asking Mrs. Miller was the closest she could get to helping herself. She just wasn’t going to get the math without having it explained to her and Mrs. Miller could explain it the soonest. 

“Mrs. Miller?” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I didn’t get my homework done.”

“Because you didn’t have time to do it or because you needed help getting through the problems?”

Because I’m stupid. “Because I needed help,” she whispered.

“Would you like to come in for extra help during your lunch period? It’d mean you’d have to eat your lunch quickly and then meet me here in the classroom. I’ll give you a pass to get through the halls.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Ruth Ann, I want to thank you for telling me this. It was very brave of you. Not everyone can admit when they don’t understand something and I can’t read anyone’s mind. If you need help, then others probably do as well. This tells me I need to slow down the pace so everyone gets it.” Mrs. Miller wrote out a note and handed it to Ruth Ann. “Here’s your pass to get back to the classroom. You get to your next class now. I’ll see you at lunch.”

Brave. No one had called her brave before. Brave was for boys, except grandma had told her about the suffragettes and how they’d gotten locked up in prison for what they believed in. That was brave. Ruth Ann thought that maybe she could be brave too. 

On the day of her graduation, grandma Lucy came to the house to help zip Ruth Ann up into her new dress, the one she’d sewn herself with the fabric that grandma Lucy had saved up to buy for her. Grandma brushed the fabric straight. “Don’t be nervous. You’ll do fine.”

Ruth Ann smiled up at her. “You sure about that?”

“In my day there’d been only seven of us graduating. We each got time for a presentation. I spoke on why women should have the right to vote. Trust me. I got through that. You’ll get through this.”

The graduates were seated up front in the school’s gym. The principal called out her name. “And now a word from our valedictorian.” 

As Ruth Ann stepped onto the podium and looked out over the crowd, she felt a swell of confidence. So many people had helped her get where she was. Grandma Lucy had believed in her and set an example of what a woman could do even when the chips were down. Mrs. Miller had taught her people will help if you ask them and given her a firm foundation in math. Mr. Bradner who’d taken them on that trip to the aquarium where she’d first seen dolphins and who’d believed her and supported her when she’d said she wanted to study marine biology and who’d gotten her that summer internship so she could actually work with the dolphins. Miss Lerner who’d helped her get the scholarship. This speech? Piece of cake. And the rest of her life? She knew what she wanted. She knew she’d find help if she asked and she knew she’d pass on that help to light the way for others.


	3. Cinderella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: retell a fairy tale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * The first section, Ella’s reaction to her father’s death, is too detached. We should see Ella grieving, not be told about it. 
>   * I’m not sure about this as a story. There’s this whole waiting period while she’s in college, until she comes of age. I think the delay would drag down the story if I tried to write it out. Although the Count of Monte Cristo has a period like that. 
>   * In Cinderella, the step-mother represents a fake authority which can be seen because she a step-parent but, of course, even more so because she basically turns her step-daughter into a servant. This reminds me of my last job in that they really wanted to control the way I thought. Basically I was clinically depressed, the last two jobs were seriously dysfunctional, and my mother passed away. I wasn’t actually calling bullshit out as bullshit but I was definitely thinking it and they could tell. And they didn’t like it. There was a concerted effort to get me to take their crap seriously, which I was sort of doing but it was more in a “I’m freaking out” rather than “yeah, I accept this as reasonable” kind of a way. So that makes this story a way of dealing with leaving that career. Actually, that makes a lot of sense because I was clinically depressed when I left that career and I make Ella depressed at the death of her father. The idea of this story would be who has authority over you and do they have authority if you don’t agree they do. At first Ella would accept that Miranda, as step-mother, has authority. Ella wouldn’t like it but she would consider it valid. So the first third of the story would be Ella realizing that Miranda doesn’t have Ella’s best interest at heart and coming to the point where she runs away to escape that authority. The next transformation would be Ella discovering / taking her own authority over herself. I’m not sure how I would write this. It could be a suspense-like story where she’s being chased and has to come up with proof while not dying, except that’s not really my genre / not something I’m interested in writing. 
> 


Her father’s death hit Ella like a freight-train straight through the heart. Her mother had died three years earlier and Ella had just regained a sense of equilibrium when he’d announced his engagement to Miranda, who had been his secretary. Ella hadn’t even known they’d been dating, Now that her father was dead, Miranda and her two daughters from a previous marriage were the only relatives that Ella had in the world.   
  
To say that Ella reacted badly would be an understatement. She locked herself in her room. She wouldn’t come down for meals. She refused to attend the funeral. She refused to even acknowledge Miranda and her daughters much less speak to them.  
  
Still her behavior had been due to grief, not madness, and there’d been no need for Miranda to have Ella thrown into a clinic. At first Ella had thought she could just show she was sane to be let free.  
  
“I understand you’d refused to eat after your father’s death.” Dr. Grundy’s pale and pudgy physique made him look like a Jabba the Hutt wannabe but Jabba at least had some life in him. Grundy’s emotionless voice made him sound like a robot or perhaps just a tape machine. He seemed to be cycling through a pre-arranged set of statements rather than reacting to Ella.  
  
The words, “your father’s death”, felt like a punch to the gut but Ella kept her cool. Reason, and not emotion, would get her out of this. Still, it was hard to look up at the man. She addressed the floor. “I did eat.”  
  
“What was that?”  
  
Ella wiped the tears away before sitting up. “I did eat. Maria left snacks out for me, in the kitchen. I never stopped eating. You can ask her.”  
  
“But you never took meals with your mother and your sisters.”  
  
“Step-mother. Step-sisters.”  
  
Dr. Grundy made a note. “I sense a latent hostility to Miranda … Mrs. Thorne that is, and to her daughters.”  
  
Latent? Blatant. The woman was a gold-digger who’d only married Papa for his fortune. Ella had already realized that kind of talk would get her labelled as a paranoid. “It was … the wedding … it was too soon. My mother’s death, the grief of it, was too raw.”  
  
“Too soon? It had been two years. You couldn’t have expected your father to remain single forever young lady.”  
  
I could expect him to avoid a tramp who wasn’t worthy to lick his boots! But no, saying that wouldn’t help her here. “I’d been close to my mother. It was … difficult seeing someone take her place.”   
“But your step-mother has been in that place for over a year and you still haven’t warmed up to her. I think I see the problem. Over-association with your mother. Demonization of the new wife. Grief induced clinical depression. I believe we can help you get better.”  
  
“Great, so I can go?”  
  
He looked up from his notes. “No, no, we’ll keep you here for about two to three months. Then we’ll see.”  
  
“Two to three months?!?”  
  
“If all goes well.”   
  
Ella jumped to her feet. “But I’m fine. Really. I don’t need help”  
  
“There’s no need to get hysterical.”   
  
“Hysterical? What are you talking about?”  
  
“I mean it Ella. If you don’t calm down, I’ll have to call in the orderlies to restrain you.”  
  
“But I am calm.” He pressed a button on his desk. Two men rushed in and grabbed her. “Hey, what is this? Stop!”  
  
Dr. Grundy turned back to his notes and muttered as he wrote. “Patients shows signs of hostility, aggression against authority figures.” He looked up to the orderlies. “Take her to room 234. Nurse Pulley has her medication waiting.”  
  
“Medication? What medication? We just met. How can she know what to give me?”  
  
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “It’s just something to calm you down.”   
  
<scene break>  
  
The next week passed in a haze. Days flashed by in a moment, everyone moving at super-speed, or moments spread out into eternities where nothing seemed to happen. Ella had no control until one night when, instead of giving her a shot, they handed her the pills. Ella hid them on one side of her mouth, between her teeth and gums, while showing the attendants the pills weren’t hidden under her tongue. She waited as long as she could, until the pills turned bitter in her mouth, before spitting them out. Her head cleared, but she pretended to be drugged, moving slowly, staring heavily.  
  
Two days later, as she was sitting on a bench, a patient shuffled over and joined her. He was young, maybe only five years older than her. His skin seemed paler than it should, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years, but maybe it was the contrast to his black hair that made his skin seem paler. He leaned over and whispered. “You’re off your meds.”  
  
She couldn’t help a telltale widening of her eyes at the words.   
  
“Me too,” he added. “They call me Prinz.”  
  
“Call you? Don’t you have a name?”  
  
“I’m a hacker. We don’t give out our names.”  
  
“Hacker?”  
  
“Okay, maybe more of a blogger.”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“You’re that heiress. Worth millions.”  
  
“In here that doesn't seem to count for much.”  
  
“They’re gonna cut up your brain.”  
  
“What?” She shifted away from him.  
  
“Lobotomy. Grundy, he’s laying a case. Gonna cut you up.”  
  
“He couldn’t. Miranda wouldn’t let him.”  
  
“She’s the one paying him. The money trail’s byzantine, but it’s there.”  
  
“She wants my inheritance.” Ella thought about it. “But she won’t get the money, not if I’m alive.”  
  
“If you’re brain’s messed up, then she controls it. Wouldn’t matter if you were dead or not.”  
  
“Why should I trust you? How do you know?”  
  
“You rather trust me or her? And I know because I’m a blogger, an investigative journalist. It’s my job to dig up shit like this. You give me an exclusive, and we’ll get you out of here.”   
  
“How?”  
  
“Got some inside guys, a guard and one of the nurses.”  
  
“And then what? I live on the lam after you’ve smeared my face all over the Net?”  
  
“Hey, it’s not that hard to hide. You just gotta distract people from your face. Change your hair color. Make it turquoise, magenta, something outrageous. Even better, change it regularly so people get used to watching your hair rather than your face. Wear glasses as if you need them to see, the tackier the glasses, the better. Go heavy on the makeup. Nobody will know it’s you.”  
  
“Yeah, sure.”  
  
“Or you don’t have to hide. You could fight her, take her to court, get someone else assigned as your guardian until you come of age.”  
  
“Me and what army? She’s in charge of all of my money, and if I lost, I’d be back under her less than tender care. No way, Jose.”  
  
“What you gonna do? Stay here and let them cut your brain?”  
  
“I want a new ID. I want the info to say I’ve gone to good schools, got good grades, and did well on my SATs.”  
  
“Hey, you haven’t even taken those yet. You haven’t finished high-school. You think you can just jump into college?”  
  
“And then law school. I want to know exactly what I’m doing when I take Miranda down.”  
  
“You know how many years that’ll take? What do I get in the meantime?”  
  
“One interview before I vanish. I’ll be evaluated by a psychiatrist, one not biased in Miranda’s favor. You get to post that and anything else you can dig up on Miranda.”  
  
“Deal.”  
  
<scene break>  
  
Prinz had been right. Odd hair color and a change of personality had been all it had taken. Nobody looked past the mask she presented to the world. But Ella had been right as well. Miranda had managed a money trail that made it looked as if she’d donated to the institution that was to help her disturbed step-daughter. To the world it looked as if Dr. Grundy has stolen funds meant for the institution. He’d ended up with 15 years jail time. The heyday had lasted about six months.   
  
As an undergraduate, Ella studied investigative journalism and computer science with an extracurricular focus, training provided by friends of Prinz, in hacking. Ella stayed out of Miranda’s business, leaving that investigation to Prinz, distancing herself from his investigation so it couldn’t be used to track her. Since she didn’t want the publicity of releasing them herself, her findings were sent to Prinz to reveal. <list of scandals uncovered by Ella and revealed to the world on Prinz’s blog>  
  
Scene: Prinz nominated for an award for the research that Ella turned up. They are discussing whether or not he should accept it since it was her research although his writing up of it.   
  
Scene: As undergraduate, second year, Ella moved into a two-story house near campus with three other students: Janice, Taylor, and Rick who study art, music, and computer science respectively.   
  
“You sure you wanna stay in? Red Blue Fish is playing tonight.”  
  
Why Janice had chosen a flapper dress to wear to a bar was one of the mysteries of life that Ella would never fathom. “Nope, told you. I’ve got a friend up for an award.”  
  
“So catch it later. The vid’s gonna be posted, right?”  
  
“Yeah, but I want to see it live.”  
  
Ella hooked her laptop’s output to the tv screen and sat back with a bag of popcorn.   
  
The announcer wore a conservative suit <want a name for him; look at that newsie from “The Man”> but his tie, bright lime green, was covered by led-lights that flashed in geometric patterns. <4-5 people up for the award. Not filling that in now> “And the winner is …” He paused to look straight at the audience. “Drumroll please,” he added with a grin. “Prinz!”  
  
As Prinz stepped out, he raised both hands with two fingers up in the peace sign <describe that better so it doesn’t sound, as first, as if he’s giving people the finger>.   
  
Scene: Okay, so this goes against what I wrote before, When she turns 21 Ella reveals herself and her story on a blog interview with Prinz and on her own blog. There’s also an interview with a psychiatrist who evaluates her as sane.   
  
Scene: Miranda tries to put up a good front but public opinion turns against her. She flees the country but Ella tracks her down -> Miranda arrested.   
  
Scene with roomies who are all “you never told us” to varying degrees of annoyance. When asked what Ella will do after she replies, look for others in trouble; reveal dark deeds; help others out.   
  



	4. Two Step-Sisters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: 3 siblings

In the Cinderella story, why are there two stepsisters? Wouldn’t the tale have worked just as well with one? There’s nothing to differentiate them: they’re both mean-spirited; they both want the prince; they both cut off their toes to try and fit into the glass slipper; they are both transformed, at the end, into stone statues, frozen until they learn to be kind. One would work as well as two.

The odds, two against one, seem to be definitely in their favor until you recall that they’re playing a zero-sum game: only one can end up with the prince. Perhaps, precisely because the sisters are doubled, their power is weakened. Like two politicians in the same party splitting the vote and thereby allowing their opponent to win, perhaps their powers of attraction are weakened because they are doubled.

Or perhaps they are two, rather than one, to suggest the crowd of young women vying for the attention of the prince. Only one sister could be seen as a serious threat. There’s Cinderella and there’s this other girl. Only one can win. Two sisters representing the crowd of girls vying for the prince means there’s Cinderella and there are all those other girls. It’s obvious who deserves the prince. 

The story isn’t, in the end, a fight to gain the prince. Even at the start of the story, we know Cinderella deserves the reward. Obviously she has to be unique and therefore must have more than one stepsister.


	5. You Can't Take My Cuppa From Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: set in London - well that gave me tea but I did move the location
> 
> At the start this was to be a lighthearted story of a man who solved the power crisis because there wasn’t enough energy to make him a proper cup of tea. Once the idea of families freezing to death entered the story, it’s tenor changed.

Dr. Edward Singh emigrated from London as much to avoid his grandmother’s matchmaking as to take a professorship at Berkeley. It wasn’t that he abhorred marriage per se. He had no time for a wife or, honestly, much social interaction at all. Plants, cells, protein chains were much easier to relate to. And so, when he solved the power crisis of 2021, it wasn’t that he cared people were suffering. He didn’t even know. His initial motivation was the desire for a proper cup of tea.

Dr. Singh was, of course, aware of the power shortage. The campaign to drop thermostats to 52 degrees Fahrenheit in winter barely he barely noticed. California was nothing if not warm. The call to turn off lights at 9 PM was more problematic. It became impossible for him to work at night which was when he thought best. The elimination of all cars except at the highest echelons was bothersome but he did live close enough to campus to bike in. But all of that paled in comparison to a tepid cup of tea.

By that time food could no longer be cooked at home. It was far more efficient, in terms of energy, for food to be cooked in centralized kitchens and so Dr. Singh took all his meals at the campus cafeterias. Because he lived in a strongly agricultural state, the local food acts did not noticeably diminish the quality of his meals. The diversity was affected by Dr. Singh, who cared more that he could be fed quickly and get back to work, didn’t care.

Dr. Singh had no warnings on the day that all changed. His trip to work was uneventful. He arrived just after the first classes had started for the day, leaving him a nearly empty cafeteria to be served quickly in before he needed to be at his first lecture of the day at 10:20. He’d loaded up his plate with eggs and potatoes, unable to fully quench a slight annoyance that the cafeteria still, after eight years, refused to serve beans with breakfast, a lack his formal complaints had never been able to correct. He then turned down the lever on the hot water dispenser. The water poured down as usual and he thought everything was alright until he wrapped his hand around the mug. He couldn’t feel the heat. Dr. Singh placed two fingers just above the water and then, feeling no heat rising, dipped the tip of one finger into the water. At best it was tepid. This water wasn’t even close to boiling. 

“Excuse me.” The women who worked in the cafeteria, being between rushes, were mostly cleaning up after the previous crowd. It was easy to gain the attention of one. “This water isn’t hot.”

He spoke to three of the cafeteria workers and two managers before he realized they would not boil water for him. 

“But you can’t make a proper cup of tea with tepid water.”

The Chancellor Powell’s office, with two huge windows taking up most of the two external walls, was one of the few truly well-lit rooms Dr. Singh had visited in years. “Believe me, Edward,” Dr. Powell replied, “I understand. They’re doing the same thing to the coffee. There’s too little oil and research into alternative fuel sources has come far too late. We all must make sacrifices.”

“Coffee? Nobody cares if the coffee is tepid. To make a proper cup of tea the water must be boiling. Boiling, Russ, not tepid.”

“Edward. I understand you’re upset but have you been following the new at all? Seventeen families have been found frozen to death in Detroit and, God help us, we know they won’t be the last.”

There had been nothing Dr. Singh could say to that. One of the auditoriums had been turned into a news center. From five to nine in the evening, any person with campus access could enter and watch the news displayed on a screen at the front of the room. Dr. Singh sat through the talk of corpses found in Detroit and watched the images of body bags being carted away. 

“God help us” Chancellor Powell had said. When Dr. Singh had been a lad, his mother had told him “God helps those who help themselves.” With the images of frozen children before him, Dr. Singh set out to solve the energy crisis.

Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, these had all been tried but the technology just wasn’t enough to make up for the lack of oil. None of these were Dr. Singh’s area of expertise. 

He started with nelumbo nucifera, the aquatic lily, a species with tight temperature regulatory properties that allowed it to raise it’s own temperature as the air around it cooled. Because the lily only raised it’s own temperature to attract pollinating beetles, he realized he’d need to extend both the lifespan of the flowers and the length of time the female organs - those which used heat to attract the beetles - were sexually active. It took him seven months to work out the theory. Three years and a team of scientists were required to create a practical energy source from the aquatic lily. In that time hundreds of thousands died as lack of energy expressed itself as inadequate heat, lack of accessible food, and impure water.

With the money from his Nobel prize, Dr. Singh set up a foundation dedicated to pulling families up out of poverty. When an unofficial biography, You Can’t Take My Cuppa From Me, focused on his technical achievements, Dr. Singh vociferously denounced the book for ignoring his philanthropy which, to the end of his days, he thought of as his greatest achievement.


	6. White Feathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: In honor of my getting _The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales_ from the library, I’m writing a fairy tale.
> 
> Prompts (not all used but these are what I started with):
> 
>   * pitch 
>   * find a thing that's been lost 
>   * "descending, marks the death of summer" 
>   * "the warm bodies shine together in the darkness" 
>   * "bequeathing your white feathers to the moon" 
> 


Once there was a girl who found beautiful, white feathers upon the beach. She gathered them together but her mother wouldn’t let her bring them home, saying that the feathers could be full of germs or bugs, but what she really meant was only dreamers brought feathers home from the sea. The girl understood that her mother wanted her to be more practical, to be sensible enough to live a successful life, and so she wished, as she gave the feathers to the seas, to become practical and prosperous. And so the sea carried her dreams away.

The girl grew into a woman who headed a major corporation. Living high above the clouds, she thought herself unaffected when her company dumped toxins into the streams. When journalists reported the deed, the woman didn’t care for she knew that the public was easily distracted. When the government fined her company for damages done to the environment, she didn’t mind because the company’s profits far outweighed the fines. When her father, old and frail, drank the water and died, she didn’t care because with her dreams the feathers had carried away her heart. 

At the funeral, the woman’s cousin saw that the woman had lost her heart, she set out to restore it. The cousin explained to the woman the damage the company was doing, but the woman already knew. The cousin showed the woman the thousands of people who were sick and dying because of the toxic water, but the woman, having no heart, lacked compassion and did not care. And so the cousin set out to find a way to restore the woman’s heart. 

The cousin came upon a fish caught in a trap. She freed it and the fish asked how it could help her. She told the fish that she was searching for the woman’s heart. The fish told her of the feathers that had carried away the girl’s dreams and how that had made the girl’s heart dry out and shrivel up until it had cracked and fallen away as dust. There was no heart to find. 

Still the cousin continued on her journey, She found a boy aiming a magnifying lens at an anthill, focusing the light of the sun to burn the ants. She smashed the lens and drove the boy off. When the ants asked how they could help her, the cousin told them of the girl whose heart had fallen to dust and of the woman she’d become. Since ants go everywhere along the earth, they could have found the dust that had once been the girl’s heart but no one can restore a living heart from dry dust. Instead they told the cousin of a mirror that lay in the heart of a great volcano, a place where no ant could survive. 

The cousin continued on and found an eagle whose young wouldn’t survive to hatch because their shells had been weakened by toxins. The cousin carefully molded a mix of linen and light plaster around the shells, making them hard enough to protect the developing embryos but soft enough that the chicks would be able to break through when ready to hatch. When the eagle asked how it could help, she told the eagle of the mirror. 

The cousin brought the mirror to the woman and forced her to look at herself. The woman screamed to see that she was hollow, that for all her possessions, she herself was empty. For the first time since she was a girl, the woman, seeing how she’d hurt herself, felt sad for the pain she’d caused others. She cried so hard that she was in danger of drowning and so her cousin built a great fire. When the woman’s tears hit the fire, they evaporated. The moisture rose high into the air and came back down as a healing rain, so heavy that all the waters of the world arose and the people had to climb on the back of a great turtle. 

But the people could not live on a turtle’s shell and so the cousin sent a beaver to swim down to the bottom of the sea and bring up dirt. Time and time again the beaver brought up dirt, depositing it on the turtle until there was room enough for all.


	7. Journey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompts (not all used):
> 
>   * journey 
>   * "I learn by going where I have to go" 
>   * "and the time went by, drawn by slow horses" 
>   * the need of Puritain America to subject all to light, this need comes from a fear of our own darkness 
>   * fear of unconscious equals love of judgement 
> 


Her life, one long journey never taken.  
That isn’t to say she never went anywhere:  
summers spent in Michigan, with her grandparents;  
days at the beach, diving off the rocky jetty,  
clambering after hermit crabs,  
dashing after cold swells of sea only to be chased away again.  
Took college a safe distance from home.  
Work branched out not too far from there.  
Took one trip. A tropical island paradise  
with her mother.  
Her life passed by, drawn by slow horses  
blinders keeping them on one steady track,  
until the end.   
Her lungs clenched tight as a fist, her breathing shallow,  
she slipped into the world on one last breath.

Her first journey; and her last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If future edits,   
> her childhood should be highlighted over adulthood? childhood brighter and more vibrant.  
> she slowly becomes duller, dimmer over time?


	8. Welcome to the War

The Englishman was diffident but the powers behind him were insistent. He was allowed an interview with the girl. While he and Madame Valérie discussed the fee for her time, Marie had her bath filled with hot water. When he was finally led into her room, she was posed with one leg rising above the rose petal covered water. Luci squeezed water from a sponge onto Marie’s back. 

The man blushed and turned to face the wall. “Please do not fear for your virtue.” When Luci snickered at the man’s atrocious French, Marie dipped three fingers in the water and splashed them up at the girl. 

“But I would not be afraid, Monsieur, not if I had someone, some strong man, to protect me. I am sure such a man would be a most excellent guardian of my virtue.”

“I can wait if you would care to remove yourself from your bath.”

“So you will come back later then?” she asked as a test. Only a fool would leave. Powerful associates had gotten him in to see her once. If he lost this chance, he wouldn’t be given another.

“I, ah, well, no. I need to speak with you immediately. It is most urgent.”

“So speak.”

“It would be easier if you weren’t at your bath.”

She laughed as if delighted. “You aren’t even looking. What can it matter?”

“I would consider it a personal favor.”

“Very well. Luci, my robe.”

She made him wait while she dressed. 

_“Would you care for tea, Monsieur? I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”_

_“Reginald Elliot-Stewart.”_

_“Tea Monsieur Stewart?”_

_“That’s Elliot-Stewart.”_

_“I beg your pardon?”_

_“My surname, Elliot-Stewart, not merely Stewart.”_

_“Ah, I see.”_

_She sat still and waited._

_“No, to the tea that is.”_

_“I see. Luci, you may leave us.”_

_“Ah no! I mean, yes I did want to speak to you in private but, er, shouldn’t there be some sort of chaperone?”_

_His glance suggested Luci wouldn’t be much use if he was, how did he put it?, a threat to her virtue. In that he was mistaken. Luci, like Marie, had grown up on the streets. She always carried a blade although to use it here on someone with such powerful backers … “Did I not say that I trust you with my virtue? Luci, go.”_

_Marie still wasn’t sure the man actually wanted to talk. He was so obviously shy she wondered if he might be a virgin. Perhaps he wanted her to seduce him?_

_He stood from his chair and started pacing. He didn’t look as if he was there to be seduced. He was anxious, yes, but not about sex. “I, ah, this might be difficult for you to believe. I, well, there is a standard set of questions I’m supposed to ask.” He squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to think. “Ah yes. Have you noticed you’ve gained strength lately? That you are speedier say when, um, running? Or perhaps that you can leap …” He stared at the bed and blushed as if leaping were somehow involved in sex play._

_She had noticed. In fact her new strength had gotten her in trouble when she’d bruised a client. He’d been a Count and not well-pleased. Marie had feared she would lose her place but Madame Valérie, ever practical, had assigned her to clients who preferred abuse. She smiled politely at the Englishman. “I do not know what you mean.”_

_“Ah, well, that’s unfortunate. I’m, well, I’m not sure how to explain this so I’ll just say it right out. There are monsters in the world, not human monsters I mean although men can of course be quite vile, but demons, creatures of darkness.”_

_This Monsieur Elliot-Steward, he saw only the surface then. Did he think her a sheltered pet? Of course she knew of demons No child could survive the streets without knowing the dangers. Below bridges and tunnels could provide shelter from the weather, but they drew those that preyed on the weak, not only men but man-like creatures although, in Marie’s experience, there was little to differentiate them. Troll-like ragpickers, be they human or not, were just as deadly as the well-dressed, the upper class. They all fed on the weak, on the young, some more literally than others._

_He could see he wasn’t getting anywhere yet still he continued on valiantly. “There are others, you see, boys and, um, sometimes girls, who, when they … well puberty sets it off. They gain powers, strength, stamina, speed, that allows them to attack, that is I mean allows them to defeat these creatures.”_

_self-preservation. Ah, I need him to go into a heroic duty speech because that throws her off … noble sacrifice … not something from her world. >_

_She laughed as if amused. “So that’s what you want.”_

_“I, um, what?”_

_“You want the dark queen of the night and you to play, perhaps, the dread beast? Do you wish to feel my dagger at your throat? Or perhaps someplace lower? Or possibly you prefer whips?”_

_“No. No! Most certainly not. I am perfectly serious. You are one of the Chosen. It is your duty …”_

_He stopped talking when she stood. “I have had enough of your game. We are done.”_

_“We are not done. I paid to speak to you.”_

_“And speak you have. You are not going away satisfied, perhaps, but that is sometimes the case when one visits a whore.” “It does not matter. You will not come again.”_

_“I will return. In fact, I won’t leave now. There. How will you answer that?”_

_She opened the door. Luc was a huge bruiser of a man, over six feet tall and built like a stone wall. The scar, running slantwise across one cheek, tended to upset those who didn’t know him. “Luc. The gentleman is ready to leave.”_

_The Englishman sputtered and threatened but saw himself out after Luc had taken only one step into the room._

_* *_

_Scene: clumsy attempt to kidnap_

_* *_

_Scene: another visitor_

_“A moment of your time, Mademoiselle?” A man, an Englishman by his accent, had barged into her room. It was impossible. He could not have gotten past Luc._

_“Your … manservant is indisposed I’m afraid.”_

_“Get out.”_

_“You don’t want to know what I’ve done with your maid?”_

_“Why should I care? She was nothing more than a street urchin when I found her. I can always find another.”_

_The man turned to go. “As you will.”_

_He was halfway down the hall when she called him back. “No. Wait.”_

_“What have you done with her?”_

_“I can take you to her.”_

_If this man tried to kidnap her, he would succeed. He was not the imbecile his countryman was. No, this one had put his finger on a vulnerability she didn’t even know she had, a child like herself, daughter of the streets, one she suddenly felt a fierce desire to protect._

_“You will not take me from Paris. When I am ready to leave your company, you will allow me to go. I will have your word of honor.”_

_He touched his hand to his heart, but there was a sardonic tone to his voice. “You have it.”_

_“Then let us go.”_

_Even though the man (um, let’s give him a name. Rackham) did not offer a card, they were let into the home._

_The carriage dropped them off just before sunset. There were homes you did not enter, not if you valued your life. Their were rumors, the Hellfire Club, nonsense like that, but Belle knew better. Behind that door, she would find no humans. Belle threw Rackham against the carriage. “She’s there?”_

_“You’ll want a weapon. My right coat pocket.”_

_She pulled out a stake, a wooden stake. When she’d been saved, that time in the alley when she’d been just a girl, her rescuer’d had a sword. “What am I supposed to do with this?”_

_“Aim for the heart.”_

_She stared at the stake. Aim for the? Of all the idiotic advice._

_“If you do want to save your friend, you should get moving. She was dropped off, oh, about ten minutes ago. They’ll play with her for a while but it won’t be that long.”_

_“How are we to get in?” She eyed the windows. Perhaps there might be one open, around the back near the attic although climbing in this skirt …_

_“I scheduled an appointment.” He climbed the steps and knocked at the door. “Octavius Rackham and guest,” he said to the footman. “We’re expected.”_

_“Come along, dear,” he called back. She followed him into the townhouse._

_Luci had been dressed not as a courtesan but as a virgin, . Claw marks, as if from fingernails, raked down the front of her dress leaving bloody trails in their wake. The girl’s hair, which had been piled up in curls, hung disheveled behind her._

_A woman, tall, blond, very fine, held Luci by the chin, had her face right to Luci’s. “God but you’re ugly. You may be a virgin, of course you’re a virgin, but it’s only because no one in their right mind would have you.”_

_“Belle,” Luci shouted._

_The woman stood. “Ah, good, they’ve sent us another. Prettier than this thing, but no virgin. I told you, it has to be a virgin.”_

_“The girl doesn’t have to be a virgin,” Rackham replied._

_“What did you say?”_

_“It’s z’shara’s feast day. You’re obviously planning to raise the demon. She doesn’t require a virgin.”_

_The woman’s smile had nothing innocent in it. She crossed the room and picked up Rackham by the throat as if he weighed nothing. “But I wanted a virgin. I’m quite disappointed. You won’t like me when I’m disappointed.”_

_“That’s hardly a problem. I already dislike you. Belle, if you would.”_

_Belle ran to Luci. “Are you alright?”_

_The girl sniffed and wiped a hand across her nose, but nodded. “I’m okay.” She leaned in to whisper. “Your man there, he’s the one who sent me here.”_

_Belle hugged Luci tightly to her._

_“We really should leave.”_

_Belle stared over at Rackham. “Just like that. You expect us to leave with you?”_

_“We can leave separately if you’d prefer but these weren’t the only vampires in Paris and this house is well-known. We don’t want to be here when others come calling.”_

_“He’s right,” Belle told Luci. “Let’s go.”_

_***_

_They did not return to Madame Valérie’s home but to an inn. “Belle, what are we doing here?”_

_“Monsieur Rackham and I, there are things we need to discuss.” “In private.”_

_Another man was waiting in the rooms, another Englishman but dressed more like a servant. “My man Harris here will take care of Miss Lucy.”_

_“I’m not going anywhere with your men,” Luci scowled._

_“Luci.” Belle took the girl’s hands. “He will not hurt you, but I must talk with him. Please, go with this Harris. I promise, if he, if anyone, hurts you, I will hurt them.”_

_Luci was obviously thinking back to the vampire’s she’d killed. “Alright.” She glared up at Harris. “But you have to feed me cake. And wine, I also want wine.”_

_“Sir?” Harris said to Rackham._

_“Give her the cake, Harris.”_

_“And wine,” the girl repeated._

_“And a glass of milk.”_

_“Wine!”_

_“Don’t push your luck.”_

_Luci left but with one last long look back at Belle. “It will be alright,” Belle promised._

_Neither said that Rackham could take more from Belle than she could from him. “I suppose you’ve made arrangements for Luci?”_

_“Elizabeth Wayland, cousin of mine, a most respectable woman, she’ll take your young friend in. She’d be assigned duties as a scullery maid to start but, with ambition and any sort of talent, she’d be given the opportunity to work her way up to head chef or any other appropriate position she likes.”_

_It was a better life than Luci would have in Paris. As the evening had proven, sooner or later Madame Valérie would find someone who wanted an ugly virgin and Valérie would not care, nor even stop to think, what might happen to Luci._

_“And in return you want, what, for me to work with that imbecile?”_

_Rackham’s laugh was little more than a bark. “Imbecile? You mean Reggie Elliot-Stewart? Hardly. I will be your guardian. I will train you … to fight the demons and to survive.”_

_She heard the unspoken “for as long as you can”. There was no reason to expect he’d keep Luci safe once she was dead. Well, she’d just have to survive then. “I get to see Luci. Every day.”_

_“That will be impossible. The Wayland estate is in the country, a good seventy-five miles from London.”_

_“Once a month then.”_

_He didn’t look surprised at this bartering. The other fool would have been incensed. “Once a month, certainly.”_

_Damn, she should have gone for once a week._

_“Are we agreed?” He held out his hand._

_“Yes.” They shook on it._

_“Welcome to the war, Miss Belle.”_

_She laughed inwardly at the irony. He was welcoming her to his war. She’d been in a war all her life._

__


	9. Christmas debacle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be about scapegoating in my family, so less a story than a personal narrative. I didn't get past the start.
> 
> On an edit, I'd need to go through notes I've made on family interactions, and I think I'd not use the Christmas narrative. I'd go with something a bit less personal or maybe less emotionally immediate.

After my mother died, I wrote a story -> woman died; she was family scapegoat. Family picked another scapegoat.

***

A few days before Christmas, after I had made over 125 “Yay! Christmas!” posts to Facebook, my aunt Alice posted the following. It was just left for me to find. It did not tag me in any way although it was definitely referring to me. Also note that it turns out there were three posts that had offended her. 

I'm not fond of some of the posts someone has been posting, making fun of Christmas practices and/or Christians (but really showing her arrogance and that she believes she's more intelligent than the rest of us), but I bit my tongue until now. I don't want to be mean, I want her to THINK about how her posts must affect her family, because if she gave it any thought at all she wouldn't have posted most of it. We're all entitled to our own beliefs, and no one should be making fun of another's beliefs.

“Ever mind the Rule of Three  
Three Times what thou givest returns to thee  
This lesson well, thou must learn  
Thee only gets what thou dost earn!”

After I read this, I spent hours going through all my December posts to work out which she might have found offensive. To discuss my response, I have to discuss family dysfunctionality and patterns. Both my mother and Alice share a pattern of verbally lashing out when they are upset. What they say might not sound terribly harsh to an outsider but is extremely cutting to the person being targeted. They also only lashed out at specific (safe) people. Alice lashes out at me but not at my sister. 

When Alice lashes out at me online, there is a distinct pattern for both her original post and my response. Her posts explain my motivations. In the example above, she says that I believe I’m more intelligent than anyone else. She announced that was why I’d made the posts she didn’t like. She never discussed my motivations before announcing them, so my typical response was to discuss my actual motivations for whatever had upset her. Up until that Christmas, she would click a Facebook Like to that response and that would be the end of it.

Traditionally my responses had a subtext of me running around like a chicken with its head cut off and saying, “Oh, I’ve upset you. Let me make it better.” That Christmas, my subtext read, “You’re an adult. Deal with it.”

...


	10. Scapegoat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based on a story I read where a country keeps a child locked in a basement. This child is the scapegoat. While he's there, everything goes well in the country. People who don't like it leave the country. No one tries to free the boy. Quite a haunting tale. Mine was exploring how that might have started. 
> 
> I've been on the idea of scapegoating for weeks. It's pretty rampant in my family. After my mother passed away I wrote a story where a woman - her family's scapegoat - died and the others force the scapegoat position onto her daughter. When my aunt unfriended me at Christmas, I realized that story had been very on the mark for my family interactions, more on the mark than I'd realized when I'd first written it.
> 
> Prompts here were
> 
>   * Definition: brio - vigor or vitality 
>   * Poetic image: all the slow fish of ignorance turned toward the sound 
>   * Emotion: feel like I'm not being heard 
>   * Poetic image: word telling secrets to no one but the river and the rain 
> 

> 
> Scapegoating took over the story. The "slow fish of ignorance" did go into the idea of the public in this story. I'd meant to have a line about denial, where some people were quicker to ignore the horrible things done to the boy than others. And my feeling like I'm not being heard of course comes out as the boy's eloquence, even words completely, being taken from him.

The boy was the son of traitors, that’s how it started. The may had almost died in the attack, which would have been a true tragedy, for the man was in his prime, youthful, athletic, an able dancer in both the social and political arenas. 

The traitors were executed, of course, but after the mayor felt his support slipping. Meetings, PowerPoint slides, polls, none of these turned up a solution. It took one man, the mayor’s campaign advisor, a purveyor of the unsellable, to speak the simple truth. “If we don’t give the people someone to hate, they’re gonna hate you, Mr. Mayor.”

And so they selected a scapegoat; and so the demagoguery began. “The blood of traitors runs in his veins,” the mayor railed. “This vile creature holds none of our values sacred. Nay, he scorns them. He spits on them. He spits on us, on our mothers, on our flag, and even on our very children.”

A journalist got to the boy, but was caught before she could make her escape. Her tapes were confiscated and destroyed. Released, she spoke for the boy. The protests were more widespread than they’d expected.

They had another meeting. “They boy’s eloquent. If he’s interviewed, he could pull more people to his side.”

“We’re not going to allow an interview, surely.”

“He’s getting a lot of attention. We’d need some excuse.”

“He can’t die in jail. It would be linked to us.”

The campaign advisor waited for the muddle of opposing voices to die down. “There is a way.”

There is an herb, belonging to the Labiatae family, found in the mountains of Oaxaca, from which a drug has been designed. This drug muddies the higher centers of the brain, driving the mind to a brute, almost animalistic, level. 

The public were, unexpectedly, fascinated. Interviews gave way to public appearances where the boy grunted, drooled. He became a city-wide sideshow exhibit, the idiot child, son of traitors. It was never quite stated by officials but everyone got the message: no more than traitors deserve. 

The boy died young. There was a school trip. Children got out of hand. Objects were thrown at the boy. A baseball, slammed at his head, caused a concussion. 

The mayor’s popularity again began to decrease, but not only that. While the boy had been on display, crime had decreased, citizens became more neighborly. All that changed with the boy’s death. The city started to slide back to what it had been before. People blamed the mayor. Again, the campaign advisor could say what no others would. “Scapegoat.”

Another boy was found. He was no relation to the traitors but was proclaimed as their unknown - hidden - child. This one was younger, unable to speak for himself, and deformed with a cleft lip. This one they put in a basement, where the light was bad, and left him dirty. They taught him unsightly habits, to pick his nose and shit in a corner. And the people went again, climbing down the narrow stairs, walking past the plexiglass - the mayor’s people had learned from their mistake. No one would kill this child on them. - and gawked. 

And it worked. Crime went down. Neighbors became friendly again. The mayor’s popularity grew.

This child lived until his late teens. And they didn’t need a reason to create a scapegoat out of the next child. By then it had become a tradition.


	11. Almost a War Bride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: full moon
> 
> In one of my writing groups, we're putting together an anthology of stories around Infinity Blake, a young man with social anxiety who works in a nursing home.

Twenty minutes into the night-shift, Infinity was cursing himself for leaving his X-Box at home. The on-shift nurse and the other orderly were watching soaps. Shit. Infinity hated soaps. He could make the rounds, in fact it was his job to make the rounds, but pacing the halls all night long wasn’t appealing. He couldn’t fix anything or clean because it might wake the residents. Nope, he was stuck, going out of his mind. Bored. Bored. Bored.

It was during his third round through the buildings that he noticed the light. It hadn’t been on earlier. Peering in, he saw an old lady, thin but not in a sickly way like some of the residents were, whose white hair hung down below her shoulders. She’d put on a robe, pale blue, even though she was alone in the room and couldn’t be expecting company. He heard the sound of metal clattering against the floor and then a voice. “Oh good Lord, I told that girl to move my tea out of this tin.”

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

She didn’t startle, like some of the old folks did, but did turn sharply as if she hadn’t expected him. “Oh, young man. I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep so I thought I’d make some chamomile tea, but I can’t get to it. These stupid tins they put the teas in, my hands just aren’t strong enough to open them.”

“I can get that for you.”

She had a tea kettle, one of those electric ones, and he wasn’t sure that was allowed. Wouldn’t it be some kind of a fire hazard?

“You can stop eyeing my kettle. It turns itself off once the water is boiling. It’s all kosher and approved by from on high.”

“Um, sorry ma’am. I’m sort of new and not sure what’s okay and what isn’t.”

“You’re that fellow with the funny name. Infinity, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How old are you, Infinity?”

He didn’t think quick enough to tell her it was none of her business. “Nineteen.”

“Nineteen? In my day you’d already’ve been off to war.”

She was ancient so she couldn’t be talking about the Iraq war. The first world war maybe? The Civil war had to be too far back.

“W. W. Two. All the boys went, soon as they turned eighteen. Some didn’t even wait that long.”

“But isn’t it illegal to join the army before you’re eighteen?”

“Oh, sure, but it was patriotic, see? And we didn’t think the war would last. Boys figured they had to get in while the getting was good. As long as they were big enough, looked old enough, they could sneak in alright.”

“Did they, I mean, were they scared?”

“Well, they never told us girls if they were. I was seeing a young man at the time, Robert Edward Miller, although everyone called him Bobby. He’s one of those who waited until he was eighteen. HIs birthday was in early July and he told me at our 4th of July celebrations.”

“Were you sad to see him go?”

“Are you really interested? I could end up going on a while. You get my age, you don’t sleep well at night.”

Was he interested? It’d be better than sitting around twiddling his thumbs. “Sure.”

She puttered about with the tea and let him carry the tea tray over to a small table set with two chairs when he offered. Once they were settled, she went on.

“As I was saying, it was the 4th of July. We lived in a little town outside of Pittsburgh, and our holiday celebrations always centered on the town square …”

 

Nobody had expected the war to go on for so long. It’d been almost seven months since America had joined the war effort and still no victory. Bobby and I had been seeing each other, that’s what we called it back then, seeing each other, for about three months. I wasn’t wearing his pin or anything, but we hadn’t been seeing other people either. 

Bobby was excited, talking a mile a minute, which he was wont to do, but that afternoon even more than usual. “I went over just this morning and signed up. Me and Fred and Davey, we thought we’d wait ‘till the 4th ‘cause it’s more patriotic that way. I mean, doing our part, that’s patriotic no matter how you slice it, but signing up on the 4th of July, that’s just above and beyond.”

“When will you be leaving?” I didn’t mind him going so much. I’d expected it. All the boys were signing up. He hadn’t even hinting at a ring or a pin or even leaving me his letterman’s jacket. My mother had been hinting about wedding dresses for weeks. What was I going to tell her if he didn’t ask before he left? 

“We’re getting on a bus the day after tomorrow. I’ll have to come up with something big for my last night.”

My heart leaped at that, but he smiled that same friendly grin he’d always given me. There was nothing special in it, nothing that said he was thinking of proposing.

We wandered around a bit, me wishing he’d say something definite and him rambling on about how great it’d be to kick Jerry’s ass. Jerry was one of the nicknames we had for German soldiers back then. 

After a little while Peggy and Walter ran up. She practically shoved her hand in her face to show off her ring. It wasn’t much of anything, just a plain band without even a diamond, but of course that wasn’t the important thing. She was engaged.

“We’re getting married tomorrow, before he heads out so he doesn’t fall for any of those floozies overseas.” She had a laugh like a horse. It really was quite awful. “I hope you’ll be a bridesmaid, Mary Ann. Unless you’ll be having a big day of your own.”

I felt my face blush. Bobby’s face never lost its grin. I should have taken that as a good sign, but if he’d been interested he should at least have said something about his best girl, given me some kind of a hint. “I’d love to be your bridesmaid, Peggy.” I was lying through my teeth but what else could I do? If Bobby wasn’t going to stake his claim, I just had to stand there, eat cake, and pretend to like it. 

“Oh, hey,” Bobby said. “Bachelor party. You haven’t given us much time, but I bet we could throw something together for you.”

“No go.” Peggy grabbed her guy by the arm. “We’ve still go announcements to make.”

“Tomorrow?” Bobby wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.

“Tomorrow night’s our honeymoon.” Peggy’s voice could have frozen a lake.

After they’d gone off, I thought Bobby might say something to me, but he didn’t. I didn’t know what to think. Maybe he wasn’t interested but maybe he was so sure of me he thought he didn’t have to say anything. I was kind of mad at him, really, but I didn’t know it at the time. Young ladies weren’t supposed to get angry with men.

 

The old woman (name?) smiled at Infinity over her teacup. In a number of ways, we lived in a different world back then. My mother, furious I hadn’t accepted Bobby’s ring, made my next year a living hell. I think that’s where I got some of my gumption from. She was so heavily down on me that I decided I’d been right just to spite her. I mean, I know now I’d made the right decision, but back then a lot of my belief in that was held up by my mother’s insistence that I hadn’t. 

“Why one year?” Infinity asked.

“What’s that, dear?”

“You said she’d made your life, um, bad for one year. Why not more?”

“Oh, well, I was a junior in high-school so it was during my senior year that she was so disappointed with me.”

“She wanted you to get married before you’d finished high-school?”

She laughed. “I told you it was a different age, but no. She wanted me safely engaged but would have allowed a marriage before Bobby was taken overseas to fight. The war made everything seem imminent and mother would have preferred a widow to a spinster.”

“I spent as much time as I could,” she went on, “volunteering at the hospital. We were called candy stripers back then. We brought books and magazines to the patients, sometimes we even took up their meals. One my senior year was over I got a job, along with a couple of my classmates, working at a factory, assembly line work it was, not the most interesting but it was patriotic with a capital P, helping the war effort and all, and, best of all, it paid more than traditionally female work would have. I helped out at home, giving some of my pay to my parents, but they were uncomfortable about it. Girls weren’t supposed to help out like that, with money I mean. Most if it I put away into savings. I knew I didn’t want to stick around my hometown even back then.”

“V-E Day was May 8th, 1945. The day itself was one huge celebration, even though we hadn’t yet defeated Japan, but the aftermath, well, that was something else. Everyone was thrilled that our boys were coming home and sad for those who hadn’t made it back. I didn’t realize, at first, what it meant for us women, not until we got our pink slips.”

We were called into the office one-by-one so my friend Cheryl, she knew before I did. I caught her crying as she emptied out her locker. “Cheryl, honey, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. We’re being given the raw end of the deal.” She must have read confusion on my face because she spelled it out for me. “We’re being kicked out. Now that the men are back, we’re not wanted anymore.”

Nancy, always a more conservative thinker than the rest of us, nodded. “Well, this was all for the war effort. We aren’t going to need more planes. What did you expect? Job’s over and done.”

“But it’s not. We’re still going against Japan. We’ll need more fighters and planes there.” 

“Oh, come on, Japan’s nothing next to Europe.”

“It’s not the planes and it’s not the war effort,” Cheryl said. “The boys are back so it’s out on your sweet behind for the rest of us.”

“Well hurray I say,” Nancy replied. “Who wants to work in a dirty factory all their life?”

“It pays better than secretarial work. It’s not like I want to live with Mom and Pops forever.”

“That’s what a husband’s for, sugar, to get you out of your parent’s home and into one of your own.”

“Not me,” I said. “I want to live, to have some fun, not become a dried up old prune like my mother.”

Our manager came by and broke up our chatter, but Cheryl had been right. Over the course of the day we were all told our time on the job was limited. The manager straight up told me that men had families so men needed the work more. As if there weren’t single mothers in the world! But of course no one thought much of them back then.

So I wasn’t in the most charitable of moods when Bobby’s mother called to say he was coming home and had asked me to be there. I went, of course, there was no getting out of that, but I wasn’t happy about it. Bobby’s mother chatted up a storm, barely letting me get a word in edgewise, while his father picked him up at the airport. Bobby ran up and hugged his mother first and then his two sisters. When he went to hug me, I took a step back. I knew it was rude and I felt so embarrassed about it that I stepped in and hugged him. I hadn’t meant for it to be a warm I’m glad your back kind of a hug but he drew me in and wouldn’t let go. His father made a joke about saving it for the wedding night. I wished I’d stayed home, but mother would never have allowed that, not after Bobby had specifically told his mother he’d wanted me there. 

Bobby and I hung around with his parents about half an hour before he begged off to take me out to eat.

“Oh Bobby!” You could see his mother was about ready to jump to her feet. “I can make you a snack, but you don’t want to spoil your dinner, do you? I’ve got all your favorites cooking.”

“Mom, I love you but I’ve been dying for a burger, fries, and a milkshake for the past three years.”

She hid her disappointment well enough that Bobby never noticed it. I tried to beg off but Bobby insisted and for some reason I went along. After the burgers, we walked around town, ending up at the fountain in the town square. I suppose it was very romantic but that wasn’t what I was thinking. Before he’d gone off to the war, I don’t know, it was exciting for me to be with him, but that night I saw someone I barely knew. As you can imagine, I was shocked when he dropped to one knee and held out a ring.

“No. I’m sorry, but no.”

“But honey, this is what we’ve been waiting for. All these years, thoughts of you is what got me through.”

Even that night I didn’t honestly believe him. He’d never written. As far as I know, he’d never asked his parents how I’d been doing. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew I couldn’t accept him. Looking back, well, I think all the young men were getting married. He thought it was what he should do and I happened to be there. The walk home was awkward. After he left me at the door, he stood there, staring, looking like a wounded puppy, before turning off angrily to head, I guess, home. But he was engaged within two months to Julie Miller so I can’t imagine he was too torn up. 

I moved out not long after that. Our families knew the truth, that I’d rejected him, but to hear tell from what he’d said, he’d never thought of me. That was fine with me, but it did make me an object of pity in town, doomed to be a spinster. I moved to Chicago to live with my aunt Louise and her husband while I went to nursing school. Once I had my degree I moved into an apartment I shared with two other girls, both nurses themselves. My mother was shocked but what did she think I was going to do? Burden my aunt for the rest of her life? 

That’s where I met Fred. She gestured toward a picture of herself and a man set out in a place of prominence on her table. “I’m not sure whether my mother wanted to weep or cry for joy when she heard the news. Sure, I was getting married, beyond all her expectations, but he had dark skin. I have to admit, it wasn’t easy, back then, being an interracial couple.”

She stopped speaking and Infinity felt as if he was supposed to say something. “Uh, how’d you meet?”

“Oh, at the hospital. He was a janitor there. I was down at the time. My cousin had gotten married, my younger cousin no less, and my mother had torn into me when she came into town for the wedding. It was the usual stuff. Spinster. A woman alone has no place in the world. I’d heard it all before but somehow conjoined with my younger cousin’s wedding, it got me down. Fred though, nothing got him down. At the lowest point in my life, he could make me laugh. He understood me like no one ever had.”

What? Was he supposed to say something to that? 

She laughed. “I told him all about Bobby, about making my own life, and about feeling sad at my cousin’s wedding. Not sad for my cousin, I mean, but sad because everyone else thought I should have been married by then myself. I’ll never forget his advice: You decide what’s good for you, and you stick to it. Don’t ever let anyone dictate who you ought to be. You be yourself.”

She put down her teacup and looked over at the clock. “Goodness me, is that the time? I think I could turn in now.”

His teacup clattered as he put it on the table. “Yes ma’am. I mean, thank you for the tea, and, uh, goodnight.”

As Infinity walked through the empty halls, he thought about her husband’s advice. Am I allowing Dr. Anderson to dictate who I should be? She told me I needed to get out, to meet other people, and I listened. Am I just letting her boss me around? As he turned for the break room, Infinity thought he might give the soap operas another chance. This talking to the residents just have him a headache.


	12. Labyrinth Walk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * contest or competition 
>   * lizard brain - for me to win, you must lose 
>   * the invisible face that reflects "something you don't talk about" 
>   * I am an old tree with withered leaves that hang on and can't fall to earth 
>   * leave a little love burning always 
>   * everything, this choir insists, might flame. Still time to change. 
> 

> 
> I was thinking of this as thoughts and revelations while walking a labyrinth. It doesn't work as well as I'd hoped it might. I didn't convey the feeling of being in a labyrinth.

The labyrinth stretched before her, the path moving forward, curving back in, leaping out, and finally ending at its center. But she was at its start. Four steps toward the center took her to the first turn, veering off left. How could aunt Alice have posted that? Turning back brought her up the center coil and then a quick turn took her outwards again. I’m arrogant? I think I’m smarter than everyone else? Turn again. I don’t think I’m better than anyone. Turn. Turn. Turn. Moving inward now. Let it go. Turn. How could she say that? Turn. I don’t think I’m better, smarter, whatever. Turn. I don’t. Let it go. 

The next turn takes her outward again, away from the center. She’s breathing deeply, in and out. Turn. In and out. Turn. In and out. She crosses the centerline, on the opposite side from where she’d started. Turn. She breathes and she turns, breathes and turns, breathes, turns. There’s a rock in the path. She picks it up and tosses it into the center. 

She’s on the outermost edge of the labyrinth, where the edging has not held back the dirt. The path here is muddy. Arrogant. Doesn’t think before acting, before speaking. The words are like a shard at her heart, digging in. She hurts. Turn. As she crosses the centerline again, she embraces her pain but it’s too sharp. She feels herself tense. She stops and breathes in deeply, releasing her breath with a sigh. She does this again, and again. She searches for the hurt but it’s gone, lost in the distraction. 

The next turn brings her to a longer section, stretching along half the circle. She searches for her hurt and finds it, breathes it in, and releases joy. Turn. Breathe in pain. Release joy. Turn. Moving outwards again. Breathe in pain. Release joy. Turn. The pain has given way. She feels joy as she turns and turns again. 

Two more turns bring her to the outmost edge but at the far right of the circle. There’s gravel at the edge. Another turn brings her up the center, back almost where she’d started, heading toward the center but then, turn, she’s heading outward again. Turn. The end’s in sight. Arrogant. Smarter than everyone else. Turn. Doesn’t think before speaking. Alice isn’t wrong whispers in the back of her mind. Turn. She drops that thought and turns up the path that leads to the center. 

She steps into the center, breathes, looks up at the blue, blue, blue of the sky. And when she’s ready, she steps out. Picks up that last thought. Turn. Alice isn’t wrong. She does act, does speak, without thinking. Turn. It’s the Tigger energy in her. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. Turn. Turn. She puts the thought aside to return to later. It’s too new. Turn. Too frightening. For now, she loses herself in breathing and turning.


	13. Snowstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
>   * takes place entirely in a vehicle 
>   * crazy glue 
>   * He disappeared in the dead of winter 
>   * The day of his death was a cold, dark day 
>   * In the nightmare of the dark, all the dogs of Europe bark 
>   * only one day 
>   * seeing truth / seeing clearly 
>   * giving something up 
> 

> 
> Story:
> 
>   * lack of control 
>   * on way to mother’s funeral. It’s a dark, cloudy day. Daughter who devoted self to ailing mother until she now 
>   * self-identifies as a spinster. She comments that she’s worried it will start snowing and they’ll be lost in the snow. Son, who’s driving, slams hand against steering wheel and shouts, “No, it fucking won’t snow.” Wife restrains him. 
>   * Daughter feels lost, not just because her mother is dead, but because her life has been taking care of her mother and now she doesn’t know what she’ll do. The son and his wife are terrified the daughter will impose on them. 
>   * The son is trying to maintain control in a situation that has none. 
>   * End of story, the daughter repeats her fears of becoming lost in a snow storm as they drive into one. 
> 

> 
> This'll require a lot of work if I decide to try another draft.

The car was stifling hot. Danny never could adjust the temp to just right, always alternating between too hot and too cold. The hills between Pittsburgh and Plum were covered in snow and storm clouds brewed overhead but the air was clear of drifts. “Once it starts, we’ll be blinded by the snow. We’ll get lost.” 

Danny slammed a hand against the steering wheel. “It’s not gonna fucking snow!” His wife, Liz, laid a restraining hand on his arm. She didn’t look back at her sister-in-law.

“I’m just saying,” Mary sniffed from the backseat. “We should have driven in yesterday. It’s not like we’d’ve had to sleep in a motel. Momma’s house is empty.” 

Liz looked over her shoulder to the dowdy dress in the back. “I am not sleeping in the house Dottie died in.”

“She didn’t like Dottie,” Mary replied. In the silence she added, “You always called her Dottie. She hated that nickname. Anyway, she may have died there but she’s not there now. I washed the bedding. It’s perfectly sanitary.” 

Liz’ lips pressed together into a thin line. “That’s not the point. It’s … it’s … disrespectful.” She crowed the final word as if she’d uncovered a convincing argument.

“How? Momma’s not there. Who’s gonna care?”

“We’ll care, Danny and I, even if you don’t consider how things might look to outsiders.”

“Just because you’re too cheap to pay for a motel.” That last was muttered under her breath, but the others obviously heard it. Danny’s hands clenched so tightly to the wheel that his knuckles showed white. 

“It’s not like you’d be paying for it,” Liz said nastily. “What with your minimum wage job.”

“It’s not minimum wage.” 

No one responded to the hurt in Mary’s voice, and the silence was broken only by the radio warning of the oncoming storm. 

They stopped at a Denny’s where Mary’s protest that she could cover her own meal was disregarded. Her brother took care of the check while she and Mary were in the lady’s room. “You could go to school, you know,” Liz said out of nowhere.

Mary stared at the water rushing over her hands.

“You need to do something. What kind of savings do you have? The money from your mother’s house won’t last you forever. If you studied, you could get a better job, something that would help you save for your retirement. You don’t want to end up living on the street.”

Liz had never explicitly said she and Danny wouldn’t take Mary in if - when was the implication - she couldn’t support herself. She didn’t need to. It was implied at every visit. 

“As if I’d want to live with you,” Mary thought. Danny, who thought working as upper management, and Liz, who agreed, would have kicked Mary out the door as never to be spoken of again if they’d known she crushed on girls, well, on women now. No, living in the same house would never go well. 

She’d never acted on it, this attraction to women, nor on her attraction to certain men either. A fifty year old spinster, living at home, taking care of her mother, didn’t get many dates. She wondered if that might change now but how would it? She’d still be herself, a woman everyone, as far as she could tell, found dull, predictable, unattractive. 

She sighed and thought of her inheritance. Dishes that had belonged her her grandmother. Her shared of the house. Danny was already saying he should get the bigger share. He’d provided grandchildren after all. Still, it wasn’t up to him. The lawyer should make sure she got her fair share, and what would she do with it? She could take a class, or classes. Just because Liz had suggested it, that didn’t make it a bad idea. She knew hospital routines. Maybe she could get something in admin. 

What she really wanted was to take a poetry class. Mary’d been writing poetry since high-school. It wasn’t any good, even she could see that but if she studied poetry, if she was taught, she could get better. She new she could.

But Liz and Danny wouldn’t approve. They’d get it out of her, somehow, and they’d tell her she was wasting her time and that they wouldn’t take her in when she became the crazy old homeless lady. It wasn’t fair. She’d never had anything. Why shouldn’t she have this?

As they crossed the parking lot, snow started falling from the sky. It became heavier as they drove back onto the road. The windshield wipers, swinging at full speed, could barely keep up. “Danny,” Mary said. “You can barely see out that window. We’re gonna get lost in this snow.”


	14. PoV is villian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompts:
> 
>   * from villain's PoV 
>   * castaway 
>   * It's where the world wrote on you 
>   * you do not have to be good 
>   * meanwhile the world goes on 
>   * the wild geese in the clear blue air are heading home again 
>   * projecting own guilt onto others; blaming them for our own shit 
> 

> 
> Didn't get far. I wasn't interested in thinking what it'd be like to work in a mine.

NB: Base The Friar’s words off of Salvatore from The Name of the Rose.

The moment we were let out of the mines, the guy they call The Friar took off for the portal. Each week he spent our one rest day climbing the dry hill up to that stone circle. I’m not sure what he did once he got there. Prayed, Charlie would say, although it sounded more like ranting to me. 

Anyway, I had better ways to spend my one day of rest. Not moving for example, that worked fine. “What the hell does he trek all the way up there for anyway?” I wasn’t asking anyone in particular. I mean, I knew why he went but it was a stupid reason. Charlie, though, he couldn’t not reply.

“What? He’s hoping to get home.”

“It’s a one-way trip, asshole. Going back up there doesn’t do jack.”

 

“Hey, you don’t know. The system could malfunction, pop him out to some other portal. He might not make it home, but he might get out of this hellhole.”

“Shit. That system malfunction, it’ll likely turn his insides out or vaporize him, leaving a trail of his atoms stretching all the way from here to alpha centauri.” 

“You all watch. Someday he won’t come back and we’ll all be crying in our milk ‘cause we didn’t go with him.”

“Milk. Shit. You know how long it’s been since I’ve seen milk?”

It’d been years since any of us had eaten anything other than the scraggly vegetables we grew here ourselves. threw us down here on the prison planet known as Bailey’s World. It was up to us to survive. And if it was just survival, we might have gotten along alright. Grow our own crops, spread out over the world, but that wasn’t possible. The air was toxic, see, outside of the domes. We depended on for oxygen and water. There was no way to spread out, no where to go, no way to get away from the ugly faces we saw day to day. Maybe that’s why The Friar hightailed it back to the portal once a week. It was as good a reason as any. 

In spring and summer, The Friar tended to spend the night up by the portal. In the winter frost, he might not make it up there at all. In the autumn, he might or might not trek back down before dark. It got mighty cold up top of that hill. He never, ever, came down before dark, except now he had.

He was followed by a new guy, built like a brick wall, taller than me by more than a foot, and about twice as wide. Granted, I’m not a big guy. I was in because I took the fall for a bunch of stockbrokers. See, they took savings, off of old people who were too slow on the uptake to protect themselves, and promise the moon and stars. I imagine you can see where this is going. I got stuck being the fall guy. The bosses had too much money to go to jail; I didn’t. I guess seeing me sent to this hell made the day for those idiots too dumb to keep hold of their moola in the first place. I wouldn’t know. I was told country club prison but I guess I knew too much ‘cause I ended up here, where no one returns from. 

I wasn’t too worried about Shorty. He had no tats, which meant he hadn’t been affiliated with any gangs before getting caught. That generally was a danger sign. Affiliated guys, they merged in fairly seamlessly. It’s the guys that nobody knew about, they caused problems. They had to prove themselves before they were allowed to fit in. A guy like Shorty, well, he’d have to kill someone, but it wasn’t likely to be me. He’d need to take out someone his own size, one of the so-called guards perhaps, to prove that he could. I was strictly small change, not worth the trouble. 

Only someone forgot to tell that to Shorty.

***

Scene: working in the mines, water break, new guy taking more than his share. Someone knocks PoV character into him as make comment. New guy blames PoV character. “I’ll kill you. I’ll cut you up.”

Mining shifts were long and hard. The wardens didn’t care who did the work so long as the quotas were met. Guys in charge, who didn’t do the actual mining, were all part of a gang on the outside. ran the show and his boys were enforcers, making sure everyone else met the quotas. 

Scene: alone, new guy going to hurt. PoV tells him can only kill one and should make it someone others will respect him for killing. Somewhere in here he watches the wild geese flying home (or south for winter really). 

Scenes with new guy bullying PoV character.

Scene: new guy chooses to kill PoV character. PoV drags himself back to portal, hoping to be taken back home. Dies on the way.


	15. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * a story set at a concert or a festival 
>   * let the beauty we love be what we do 
>   * a path of moonlight to bring you safely home 
>   * manipulation 
>   * holding onto love in a graceless world 
> 


I walk into one of those outdoor stores: REI, Cabelas, Dicks. Dougie is coming down the escalator as I’m wandering around wondering where to find socks that’ll keep my fee dry no mater how wet it gets. We get to chatting. We don’t know each other well so it’s “How’ve you been” and “Long time no see” until he, from out of the blue as far as I can tell, informs me from behind his smug grin that he’s in a relationship. And as I wonder what it’s like to live in a mind where he thinks every woman is hitting on him, no matter how innocuous the conversation, my thoughts turn back to a camping trip, one at a festival at Four Quarters, probably one of the Stones’ Rising events.

Doug, who goes by Dougie because, let’s face it, he’s a boy in a man’s body, is attractive enough. He has of those ectomorphic string bean kind of bodies with wavy brownish hair. And he’s been hitting on both Sumitra and me. We’ve both got bodies on the chubby side of attractive so I guess he’s got a type. 

I’ve backed off fairly quickly because it’s obvious he’s looking for a one-night stand and that’s not what I want. I’m pretty sure it’s not what Sumitra wants either, but she’s flirting back. They do spend the night together, possibly a couple of nights, and then on the final day of the festival when he packs up and gets out, she’s left behind looking hurt. And what I don’t understand is how she couldn’t see that he didn’t want what she wanted. It seemed so obvious to me that he wasn’t looking for more than a short fling.

 

And at another festival, same campground, possibly another Stones’ Rising, he’s brought a woman with him. I can see her, pale skin and dark hair in the night. I don’t recall her exact words but the gist is that she’s asking if he’s a faithful kind of a guy. I can tell by the way she’s saying it that she suspects he’s not, but I don’t say anything. And I don’t know why. It’s not as if I owe him anything. We just don’t talk about uncomfortable things in my family. 

And I’m back in the camping store, looking for a way to gracefully get out of this conversation when he does it for me. I guess reassuring himself I’m interested - although how that happened I don’t know - and informing me he’s taken are all that he wanted out of this chat.

 

We meet only once more after that. Tom and Marija used to have, possibly still do have, monthly drumming circles at their house. Dougie shows up with his fiance. She’s thinner than anyone I’ve seen him with before, a young redhead with the emphasis on the young. They aren’t in a superly sugar-coated lovey-dovey part of the relationship but they are together in a fairly solid seeming way. But looking at them, I can’t help having a few thoughts about his one-night stands. Again, I dont’ say anything, but I hope he’s given his fiancé a full disclosure.


	16. Birth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in a 'verse I'd created for a Na No novel. Basically descendants of Angels, I call them Angeli here but I had another name in the novel, fight demons. They are controlled by Domine. This predates the novel by about 20 years. Everyone near an Angeli dies, no ones knows why even as late as the start of the novel. 
> 
> I know the story descends to descriptions of scenes toward the end. That's what my first drafts tend to do.

“So a vulture boards a plane carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess says, ‘I’m sorry but we only allow each passenger one carrion.’ Carrion because it’s a dead raccoon, get it?”

Nancy’s laugh was more polite than amused. She’d heard the same joke three times already that morning. The same four old men came into the store each week telling the same tired joke. She rang in the last two purchases and looked up to give him the total, wincing inward in anticipation of the inevitable comment: “cheap at half the price.” The gentle lub dub of the man’s heart gave way to a quick arrhythmic pounding. His eyes widened. With a gasp he crashed to the floor. 

Nancy darted around the corner. Kneeling was harder with eight month’s worth of pregnant belly in the way. Shouting for help, she glanced around the store and stopped. Two customers had collapsed to the floor, one in an aisle and another at the deli counter. Mr. Graff was slumped over his desk. She couldn’t see either Jim or Mary behind the counter. “Hello?” she called out. There was no reply. 

Through the window, on the sidewalk on Main Street, she saw two more bodies, just outside the store, also collapsed on the ground. The cars in the street weren’t moving. Horns started honking behind them. Nancy felt as if she were frozen as she watched the scene unfold. Angry drivers leaving their cars, ready to knock sense the people they were stuck behind, only to gasp in horror and step back as they saw the drivers were dead. 

She turned back to the old man. She wished she could kneel down to comfort the old man even though he was obviously past comforting, but he seemed so distant, so alone lying there on the hard, cold floor. Nancy wished she’d taken the time to learn his name. 

Police. She should call the police. That’s what one did in an emergency. Someone must have called already. If she called too, would that be too many calls? Maybe that’d be good. Maybe they’d realize it was an emergency if there were more calls. On the other hand, maybe she’d be tangling up the lines. Tangle, that couldn’t be the right word. 

There was a phone in Mr. Graff’s office. She had to step around his … around him to get to it. She dialed 911. The line was busy. That must mean someone else was calling. The police must be on their way. Still it didn’t seem right for the line to be busy, no matter how many people were calling. She hung the phone up and stepped back into the main part of the store. 

The old man looked so undignified collapsed against the floor. Surely it would be a kindness to straighten out his limbs. No, the police would want to gather evidence. This was a crime scene. The whole store must be. She should leave. When the police came they might think she’d been disturbing evidence. There had to be someplace she could wait until the police came. 

She grabbed her purse without thought. As she stepped out, the sky was so bright it blinded her but just for a moment. Everything seemed brighter, more distinct, but at the same time distant. Everything she looked at seemed far away. She felt as if she’d never make contact with anything again. 

A crowd had gathered, most standing a few feet away from the bodies and cars. Two or three people seemed to be checking for pulses. Nancy could have told them that the bodies were dead, but that was the one thing you never did. Never draw attention. 

“What did you do?”

Huh? She turned to see one of her customers, an older woman who tended to complain quite a bit. She looked furious. “What did you do?” the woman repeated.

“Do? Nothing. I was checking out his order and then …” She gestured toward the bodies.

“You’re the only one who walked out of that store. You must have done something.”

“What do you think …” Nancy left the remark unfinished. The woman thought she’d caused this? Bodies that had collapsed with no rhyme or reason? How? 

The woman grabbed her arm. The grasp was weak. Nancy could easily break away, but she was suddenly conscious of the crowd closing in, drawn to the conflict, and the fact that there were no police. Why were there no police? Something was wrong. It wouldn’t take them so long, not for something this big. Nancy pulled out of the woman’s grasp. She had to get home, but the crowd was too dense. “Please, I have to go.”

“No,” the old woman shouted. “You did this. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Please.” She heard gasps and cries from the back of the crowd and then saw a ripple which gave way to an opening. Dave stepped forward. His face was lined with worry.

“Come on.” He pulled her through the crowd, shoving the few people who’d filled in behind him so hard that they crashed back into the crowd, taking bystanders down with them. 

“David. What are you doing?” Attention, he was drawing attention. But then they were at his car, and old Volkswagen. Jackie, in the backseat, looked stoic and Bill as if he were trying to not cry. They were the other two of her kin working in town. “What happened?”

“Don’t you know?” His voice broke as he asked.

“Deaths,” Jackie replied. “On the farms, at the bar, at the gas station.”

“Worldwide,” Jackie added.

“What?” David sounded shocked.

“TV was on at the bar. Sudden deaths worldwide. Not sure but I bet they’re related.”

“Is it us?” Nancy asked.

“We don’t know. We’re meeting at the farm.”

The farm could mean only one place. Their great-grandparents, fleeing Domine control, had settled on a farm. They’d spread out from there, at first keeping the bloodlines pure but later they were forced to intermarry with neighbors. Too few of them had been able to flee together. 

The familiar porch was obscured by cars. They really had called everyone in. 

Scene: choppers and cars out of nowhere. Death. Most everyone there, either human or Angeli, killed but Nancy taken. 

Scene: big bad who controls Angeli in novel wants Nancy’s child. They lobotomize her because can’t keep Angeli captured long enough. Ends with him bringing the infant to the Angeli orphans he already rescued. They basically worship him.


	17. How the Buffalo Got His Headdress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * set in a country I've never been to 
>   * bait and switch 
>   * I cannot say who it is I am / I am amazed; I am amazed 
>   * it stays, frightened outside the range of my campfire 
>   * I rest in the grace of the world - which is what Old Buffalo is trying to do ;-) 
> 


Old Buffalo had found the wallow hours ago. He’d rolled in the dry dust until it covered him in a thin layer. The two girls had found him recently. For less than ten minutes, they’d been sitting there watching. “He doesn’t move,” Maida whispered. 

“I don’t know,” Zia replied. “Maybe he’s dead.”

“Can’t be. I saw him blink.”

“You never did. That was a star twinkling.”

“Twinkle, twinkle, in his eyes. Buffalo man never lies.”

“He’s lying now.”

“Can’t be. He hasn’t said anything.”

“He’s lying down … in the wallow.”

The laughter sounded as a rough cawing. 

“You sure he’s not dead?”

“Course I am.” 

“Not. You think he’s dead too. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“He’s been dead for weeks. Stinks.”

“You’d be a stinky-poo too if you were covered in dust.”

“Well, that just proves it. Dead. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. That’s what they say.”

“Who says?”

“I dunno. People. Heard it once. Words over the dead.”

“We could bring him back.”

“Why bother? He’d still stink.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.” Zia raised her head to suggest she knew what she was talking on. “Buffalo just do.”

“Can’t stink as much as he does now.”

“I’m still not sure he’s dead.”

“We could check.” Maida stood and shouted. “Hey, Old Buffalo. You dead?”

They waited for a veryvery long time, for almost a whole minute although they couldn’t have told you that because they didn’t track the time. “See, I told you he’s dead.”

“No, I told you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Surely sure.”

Zia fell back to the ground and stared up at the stars. “It’s boring, waiting to see if he’s dead.”

“We could check.”

“Thought we did.”

“No, really check.”

They both flew to their feet. “Have to be careful. Old Buffalo, he’s fast.”

“We’re faster.”

“Yeah.” As Maida grinned, her teeth flashed white in the moonlight. “We are. Fastest, that’s us.”

“Let’s go then.” 

They ran apart, flanking him on either side, dark shadows in the darkness, barely visible. Zia ran up first, jumping into the air, fingers brushing against coarse fur, leaping high, up and over.

“He is alive!” she exclaimed as she joined Zia on the other side.

“Can’t be. Didn’t move.”

“You try.” 

Maida cartwheeled toward the buffalo, leaping up just before striking, pausing delicately on his broad shoulders before launching herself over. 

Without speaking they each moved, joining together before the motionless beast. “If he’s alive, why won’t he move?”

“Must be so bored he can’t.”

“Impossible to be that bored.”

“Is not.”

“Is.”

“Can cheer him up.” With those words, Maida ran straight for Old Buffalo, leaped into the air, grabbing each horn in passing to vault herself over. Landing behind, she threw her arms into the air. “Ta da!”

Before Zia could reply, the air filled with thunder and the earth shook below their feet. “What is it?”

Zia dodged to the left, barely avoiding the horns aimed straight for her. “Old Buffalo’s stampeding!”

Mia dodged Old Buffalo and grabbed Zia by the hand. “This way.”

They dodged left and the buffalo charged. They dodged right and he was there again. “There’s no where to go!”

“Into the air.” Feathers sprouted as they leaped higher than ever, but a horn scraped one crow. Feathers fell to the ground.

“Mean Old Buffalo,” the girls called out from an alder. “To steal my feathers.”

Old Buffalo didn’t speak, not one word, as he wove the feathers into a headdress. 

“How’s he doing that?” Maida whispered. “He didn’t get that many feathers.”

“Magic, silly.”

“Well, I don’t think he should be doing magic with my feathers.”

“You want to go get them from him?”

“Shhh, let’s see what he does next.”

Old Buffalo worked magic and wove, wove and worked magic, until he’d created a great headdress, one large enough for even his head. It hung down past his shoulders, joining together underneath into a great beard.

“Oooh, it suits him.”

“Just as well. We’d never get it off him.”

“Could.”

“Couldn’t.”

“Could. If we wanted to.”

“But we don’t.”

“So we won’t.”

Laughing, crow girls flew off.


	18. Stepsister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I could actually do something interesting story. Before rewriting, read The Bicentennial Man because this also jumps over decades. 
> 
> Prompts:
> 
>   * about an historical figure 
>   * riptide 
>   * night never wants to end, to give itself up to light, and so it hides itself in things: obsidian, crows 
>   * what soft incense hangs upon the bough 
>   * why remain loyal in an age when loyalty is not rewarded? 
> 


You know the story. It ends with a glass slipper on the chosen one’s foot and two sisters, meanspirited and dark of heart, facing a number of fates: married off to local lords, transformed into toads, made into drudges themselves, faces pecked to ruin by birds. In one version, they are turned into statues, cursed to remain still, cold marble until their hearts warmed. 

***

The statue was dreadful. The clothes, formalwear that hadn’t been in fashion for thousands of years, acted in stark contrast to the face. Instead of a haughty, noble sneer or even the charming smile of a maiden, the statue’s face bore a frozen mask of rage. 

Sabrina Fondin had set the statue at the heart of her Sun and Moon Meditation studio. She’d actually lost students when she’d set it out on public display in the main meditation area. 

“I can’t still my thoughts with that demon overlooking me.” 

“It’s ugly. I don’t want to look at something that ugly.”

“It’s disrupting my harmony.”

Still, sensei Fondin refused to have it removed. “This is an image of the unstill mind, the we call carry in ourselves. This statue represents what we must avoid in ourselves, what we are learning to control.”

And so the statue stood in the meditation space as students came and went, came for classes, came for years, left because they’d moved, because they’d grown ill, because they’d grown old, but the statue remained unchanged through decades of teachings.

“If things are unwanted, the practice is to move away, and this practice is to move towards what is unwanted, to bring it in, to open our hearts as wide as possible to it.”

“If anything is pleasant, delightful, the practice is to let it go, to wish it could be felt by others, to even let it go so others can experience it.”

“It’s a practice of creating a lot of space, a lot of openness, or even celebration. It begins with discovering this openness in ourselves, some seed of openness in ourselves, and that is contagious and other people benefit from it.”

“We are changing the environment, changing the space, and everyone benefits from it.” 

By that time there was a young man, Adam, who’d been studying at the center for three years. One morning found him staring at the statue. “Didn’t she look angry once?”

“Once? Are you saying the statue’s face has changed?”

Others laughed but Adam was sure he was right. He searched through archives and found old images of the statue. “Look. This is what she used to look like. I mean, she was totally furious but now she looks calm.”

“What’d you do, photoshop it?”

Adam insisted he hadn’t, but no one believed him. And still the teachings continued.

“If there’s some willingness to let things fall apart, if there’s some curious as to what is happening, if the armor has cracks, then the suffering is much less. Think of ego as a room. Ego is like getting a room of your own that you can have just the way you like it. For example, it’s just the right temperature in there. It’s just the way you like it. You can play the music you like in there. Does it sound good? Do you like this? Only the people that are on your wavelength come in. None of those ones who are voting for the wrong political candidate, they can’t get in. It’s this great place for you. There’s only one problem. You find that as you stay in there, the outside becomes more and more threatening for you. When you go out, that music you don’t like irritates you more than it used to and people you used to get along with, they irritate you and you can’t get along with them. So you stay in the room, and you block yourself in, and it begins to feel like a prison in there.”

Between sessions, a student’s granddaughter running about the space. She stops, stares at the statue, and laughs. “What’s so funny?” asked Adam (meditation instructor)

“She winked at me!”

“Honey, don’t let your imagination run wild. Statues can’t wink.”

“But she did.”

Adam sat and stared up at the statue until he was sure. It did seem to wink. He thought back to his younger years, when he’d been sure the statue had changed its face. He brought out the old pictures, the face of rage, and compared them to the calm smile of the statue. Had she always been smiling? In his memory, the face was calm but there’d been no smile.

“The opposite of being in that room, of being curious …”

As he spoke, Adam saw something move off to his left. Students were gasping, one even shrieked, and a few pointed. Adam turned to see that the statue, well it didn’t seem to be a statue any longer. A woman stood in it’s place, a woman with the same small smile, in clothes, once pale marble, that were now full of color, dark blues shot with silver, a full, antique formal gown but one that looked brand new. 

When she opened her mouth, he almost expected words of wisdom to pour forth, but instead she asked, “Where is Charlotte? Where is my sister?”

***

Margaret, for that was her name, became a minor celebrity for a short while. Many of the students swore they’d seen the statue become a woman, but naturally few believed. However, a legend did grow out of it, one that stood the test of time. Hundreds of years later, it was said that Adam ’s teachings were so powerful that he’d brought a statue to life.

***

Three years passed before the other statue, or Charlotte as Maggie insisted on calling it, was found. World-Wide Weird, the blog which had funded the search, posted a video of the reunion. Maggie couldn’t be said to have been fond of the headlines on different blogs, most of them mentioning Charlotte as her frozen sister, none of them getting the curse right, but if that was the price of getting her sister back, it had been a small price to pay.

In , there is a woman teaching meditation practices. To one side of the room, facing the teacher as the students face the teacher, stands a statue, that of a woman wearing a formal court gown of an ancient style. There are students who swear the statue’s face had been full of rage, “a storm of fury” as one puts it, when it had been first placed there, but all you see are tears welling in the eyes - a lifelike detail you are quite impressed by.


	19. Night of the Hunter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts
> 
>   * set in a theater 
>   * glissade: 1) skillful slide over snow or ice using a toboggan or skates 2) a sliding or gliding step in dance 
>   * uncertainty (about future) 
>   * the world is mud-lucious 
>   * plain sense of things as an end of imagination and as a sadness without cause 
> 

> 
> NB: Charlotte -> doctor’s wife from Foyle’s War season 2, episode 1, “Fifty Ships”. I don’t recall the name of the character, assuming one was given and I’m too lazy to go back and watch just for a first draft. 
> 
> NB: the two women are in their 60s.

The evening had chilled while they’d been sitting in the theater. Edith, drawing her jacket tighter, said as she tried to glimpse through the London fog, said, “After that dark a movie, if you think I’m walking home through this fog, you’ve got another thing coming, Lottie dear.”

“Oh, but I don’t believe you’d feel more comfortable standing at the bus stop and waiting for some mysterious killer to track us down there. Sitting ducks, don’t you know.”

“At least the bus will be bright and warm. Come on.” 

Instead of joining her cousin, Lottie turned to stare at the poster, Robert Mitchum, knife to one hand, holding Shelly Winters in a hug. “I don’t think it was as bad as all that. People went through lots worse in the war.” 

Edith took Lottie’s arm in her own and turned toward the bus stop. “Well, yes, your husband was an absolute bounder. The only thing that can be said for him is that he didn’t murder you.”

“Not my body, at least, but he did try to murder my spirit. He might have succeeded … if it hadn’t been for the war.”

“Now there’s enough about that. Let’s at least get into this shelter to wait out the wind.” “These are supposed to be better times after all.”

“No more blackouts,” Lottie mused, “although I’m not sure that’s an improvement. I used to adore staring up at the stars.”

“At least rationing’s ended.”

“As long as you don’t mind Government Cheddar.”

“Well, yes,” Edith agreed. “What I wouldn’t give for a decent brie. At least there’s plenty of sugar.” When Lottie didn’t reply, Edith added, “That was your cue, dear, to tell me my disposition could do with a bit of sweetening.”

Lottie seemed to come back to herself with a little jerk of her shoulders. “Oh, Edith, you know I’d never say anything like that.”

“No, I suppose after it’s not the kind of thing you’d joke about. Where were you?”

“What? Oh, nowhere special, just thinking.” 

“I was just thinking of the discrepancy between the poverty of the characters in the movie and the current economic boom in the States.”

“But the movie isn’t current, is it? I read someplace it’s based on a series of killings from the early 30s. You have to admit, they were poor then, or at least some of them.”

“Well, yes,” Lottie admitted.

“That’s not all, is it?”

“Well, no. I can’t help thinking about that poor woman, the mother. All she was trying to do was to protect her family, her children, and she bought that darkness straight into her house.”

“Unlike you, who’d been living with the darkness for thirty years.” Edith could see that her comment had cut Lottie too far to the quick. “And, besides, I don’t know why you’re blaming that poor woman. It was the father’s fault in the first place. He stole the money.”

“Yes,” Lottie agreed. “They each tried to do the right thing. Well, I don’t suppose it could be called right in the father’s case. He did steal after all. But his intentions were pure.”

“But we both know pure intentions aren’t enough. After all, actions have consequences. One must take them into account as well.”

Lottie thought of her own consequences. hadn’t killed her so much as, well shunned wasn’t the correct word, not exactly. Erased. He’d erased her or tried to. _You will never speak to me again_ , he’d said. _If I enter a room, you will leave it. You will take your meals alone._ “That’s what made the movie so sad, I think. That poor mother, she’d done everything she’d been expected to and still it put her children in danger. The movie should have ended happily for her.”

“And what would that have been? Husband released from jail? Happily ever after? That would have decimated the plot.”

Lottie thought of her own husband and her own mistake. During the war … Oh, if only she hadn’t picked up that phone but she was being silly. They’d have called back. They’d have kept calling until they’d gotten her. _Your cousin, Hans_ , the voice on the phone had said. _He’ll be arriving in a boat, rowing to shore. He’ll never make it alive unless you’re there with a light to guide him in._ Little Hansel. They’d played together as children, but that’d been before Germans became the enemy. How could she have let him be lost at sea? She’d brought him safely to shore, but he’d been lost anyway, caught as a spy. At least he’d gone to his grave knowing she’d cared enough to help him in.

That detective, the one who’d worked it out, hadn’t turned her in. He’d understood her dilemma. hadn’t. He’d hit her and disowned her. Oh, sure, he’d let her stay. It had taken her years to work out that he’d kept her at home as much to abuse her as to protect himself. He didn’t want to have to explain he’d been living with a traitor. 

“Well, the wages of sin and all that,” Edith added. 

At first Lottie’s own consequences had felt like death, that shunning on part. She’d been desperate when she’d run off to join cousin Edith as a nurses’ aide. And then after the war they’d moved in together. It had been to their mutual advantage. Two together could get a much nicer place than one alone.

Edith had helped her find a position in a library. Lottie had been embarrassed at first. She could recall telling herself that no one had to know she was paid. Even a lady might volunteer at a library. What a fool she’d been, ashamed of the very work that allowed her to live apart from . 

She hadn’t realized, until she’d left him, what a misery he’d made of her life. In thirty years of marriage, she hadn’t had one kind word. Oh, sure, youngsters nowadays would think that the times he’d hit her were worse, but he hadn’t done it often. He’d always made her feel she’d deserved it. Leaving had been a blessing although she hadn’t realized it at the time. “For me, the wages of sin were more of a rebirth.”

Edith laced their arms together again. “Which is as it should be.”


	20. layoff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts (not all used):
> 
>   * written in second-person PoV 
>   * trail of breadcrumbs 
>   * gathering information to make a decision 
>   * sunburn blisters on an office pallor 
>   * the great houses remain but only half are inhabited 
> 

> 
> The idea with the second-person PoV worked out as this is a person who listens to everyone around him and never chooses what he wants himself. He doesn't have a strong center or core because he's always following the crowd. Which is why, if remix, quite a bit of the dialogue should be others telling him what to do or being all, "hey, we're all doing this. Come on."

Before your father’d lost his job at the steel mill, he’d been a larger than life figure of a man. You’d felt as if nothing could drag him down. It was a warm and safe feeling. He became smaller after the mill had closed. He couldn’t find another job. Few of his friends could. Your mother started working and your father closed in on himself, spending evenings at the bar with his old work buddies, sinking further and further away.

***

You visit your guidance counselor in your senior year, just like all your friends. Mr. deRusso’s office is small and dark. There’s enough space for his computer but not much more. His two finger pecking at the keyboard style takes forever. “Your grades are good. College is a real option.”

He doesn’t ask about your family’s income and you don’t offer the information. You know you want an MBA but that you’ll have to work to make expenses. A B.S. in computer science teaches you how to fix computers and you work at repairs on the side while working towards your MBA.

***

You’re older than your co-workers but you’re young enough that the age difference doesn’t show, living in New York city, and making more bucks than you can shake a stick at. “The corner office.” Joe slaps your shoulder in a show of camaraderie. “That’s what we’re all working toward. That’s the real power.”

You go out nights with Joe and Tom and Roger. Dave tags along sometimes but he’s something of a geek and the guys tease him. You don’t tell them that you majored in computers before turning to your business degree.

Nights are what you live for. Dancing in rooms full of light, drinking, and the girls, secretaries most of them, trying to look more than what they are, but it doesn’t matter under the flashing lights of the dance floor or darker lights of the booths. It matters even less in the mornings when you wake up at their homes. You try to be out the door before they wake. 

***

When Melman calls the whole department into a meeting, you’re not concerned. You aren’t even concerned enough to wonder what it’ll be about. You’d scored with an absolutely hot redhead the night before and are still lording it over the other guys.

You’re not really paying attention until he mentions layoffs. Dave and Trina are gone. You hadn’t missed them in the crowd but it’s obvious once their names are mentioned. It’s something of a shock but it can’t touch you. Dave was, well, he just hadn’t been one of the team. Trina had been okay, for a woman. It doesn’t occur to you that there could be more layoffs.

***

Jim gets promoted to a new office before you do. It hurts. Jim’s made mistakes. You’ve had to cover for him. Apparently you’ve covered too well. You don’t say anything though. The additional layoffs have nothing to do with your keeping your opinions to yourself. It’d sound like whining and you want to look good the next time they’re handing out promotions.

***

Your layoff comes as a shock. You don’t understand. You’ve done everything asked of you, and your better at your job than Jim who still has his.

You expect that another job will turn up, but for a few weeks there are no offers. When you do get an offer, it’s at three-quarters of what you’d been making before and you reject it out of hand. You’re better than that lousy job. You just have to keep looking. 

When the money runs too low, you break your lease and move in with a friend, just for a few weeks until you find a job and can get a place of your own. The job never comes. After three or four months, your friend has a chat with you in the evening while his girlfriend’s off at step class. “Here’s the thing. I’m gonna pop the question and, well, she doesn’t want you here. Once we’re Mr. and Mrs., she wants the place for just the two of us.”

You tell him you understand even though it hurts. 

***

When you move back in with your folks, your younger sister looks you up and down and says, “Hey, paleface. You know Mom almost didn’t let you in, right? Coming to the door all pasty like that, she thought you were a vampires.”

You ignore her snark but wonder if you parents do mind your being there. The job market isn’t any better in Pittsburgh, and you eventually allow your mother to convince you to take a job with your uncle. Selling cars sucks, but you’re good at it. The social life is even worse. Your high-school buds are mostly married and somehow you end up spending a good amount of time playing dutiful son, brother, and uncle. It’s not as bad as you’d thought it would be, but you still miss New York City.


	21. Safer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * River Song steals the Tardis and goes off rescuing people. 
>   * set on another planet 
>   * Father's Day 
>   * nobody listens to what I say 
>   * vaunting hands, now devoid 
>   * two hands full of toil, striving after wind 
> 


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've not seen much Dr. Who and it's been ages since I've watched Torchwood so voices may be off.

The tunnels, offshoots of the subway, were dark but wide and they branched out in a number of different directions. If anyone came, they could get away, they could hide while the searchers moved on. Peter, the eldest, was the reason they’d run. Tomorrow’d be his birthday, the nineteenth, and the adults took you away on your nineteenth. 

“How’re we gonna get food?” Maddy, twelve, was trying not to lag behind. They’d snuck out around midnight and it was well into the day although you couldn’t tell that by the tunnels. 

“Why don’t you go back home then? Stay with those creatures that took over mom and dad. At least you’ll have food and warm beds. You’re not the one they’re coming for.”

Peter’s words had stung and Maddy snapped back at him. “They’re coming for the both of us. It’s not like they’ll let any of us wander under the bowels of the city.”

Peter stopped, turned back to her, and gave Maddy a hug. “Sorry. I know it’s hard for you too. Maybe you should have stayed. It’s not like they’d do anything yet. You’d have a good six, almost seven, years before you’d have to worry.”

“I could have brought you supplies. They might not search so long, if it was just you.”

In the slim glow of the flashlight, Maddy could see Peter’s tense smile. He was pretending, she could tell. They’d been a lot of pretending since those weeks, about a year ago, when all the adults had gotten, well strange didn’t cover it. They weren’t themselves anymore. A light had gone out in them. “Nah,” she continued. “They’d have just followed me to you. It’s better this way. We can all get away, maybe find a resistance. It can’t have happened everywhere.”

“Let’s get moving.” 

They found a section, more open than the rest, with small homes built up right there, in the tunnels. “Homeless people,” Peter said. “They used to live down here.” 

That was bad. If they’d been found down here, under the earth, then where were she and Peter supposed to hide? 

“We should keep moving.”

“Wait,” Maddy said. “Maybe there’s food. They’ might have cans of stuff down here. They wouldn’t have taken it, not after they’d been changed.”

Maddy could see the conflict warring on Peter’s face. He wanted to keep moving, to discover a place they’d never be found, but he had to care for her too. “Okay, but let’s be quick.”

They never had time to eat from any of the cans they turned up. Footsteps echoed through the cavernous tunnels. Dozens of feet hitting the ground in conjunction, as if all the bodies were controlled by one mind. The darkness made it harder, not to hear but to tell where the marching steps were coming from. Maddie didn’t know which way to turn. “Should we hide? Maybe they’ll go past the houses?”

“No, this way.” They ran about a dozen feet into one tunnel, until they could see the glow of flashlights from around a turn. “Back,” Peter whispered, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the abandoned houses. 

The footsteps were louder and every tunnel had light at the end. “Peter, what do we do?”

Peter wasn’t moving. He stood at the center of the space, slowly turning and gazing down each tunnel as if it’d offer a way out. 

“Peter?” 

The lights were brighter now. Maddy could see faces, so devoid of expression they almost looked blank. She ducked into one of the homes, more a shell of a room than an actual house, but there was a slide-lock which she snapped shut. It wouldn’t keep them out, not with walls this thin, but there was nothing else to do. 

She stepped back, away from the door. She heard Peter screaming and she shrieked herself as a hand slammed across her mouth. Over her muffled screams, she heard a woman’s voice. “Shh, sweetie. We need to be quiet.”

Maddy nodded and the hand let go. They stayed there, breathing as quietly as possible, until the last of the flashlights went away. “We should go,” Maddy said.

“They could still be out there, waiting in the dark.”

Maddy shook her head from side-to-side and then realized the woman wouldn’t see it in the pitch dark. “If they were out there, we’d see a light.” Whatever these things were, they weren’t subtle. It was as if they were so certain of their victory they didn’t even bother to hide.

“Come on, then.” The woman opened the door and listened. She then took out a flashlight of her own and scanned it around the tunnel. “This way.” 

As they snuck down one of the tunnels, Maddie took in the woman. Her hair, curly and blonde, almost frizzy, was like nothing the changed adults would wear. Their hair tended to be short, neatly out of the way. But it was the woman’s face that was the most comforting. It was alive in a way Maddie hadn’t seen on an adult’s face in a very long time.

“In here.” Here was a big box, what mom would have called a phone booth a long time ago. It was blue with windows you couldn’t see through and had the words Police Box and Public Call displayed at the top.

Maddie’s heart sank. “That’s not gonna help.” She wanted to explain that the whatevers had gotten the police too but knew it’d sound crazy.

“Things aren’t always what they seem.” With that the woman grabbed her hand and pulled her into the police box. 

It was bigger on the inside. Maddie couldn’t stop thinking that because, well, it was bigger on the inside. The woman had gone up to a panel which was part of a whole dohickey that was itself bigger than the police box had looked from the outside. “Hold on.” There was a sound that almost whooshed but didn’t, quite. 

The woman turned to Maddie. “Alright, we’re here.”

“Here?”

“It’s easier to show you. If you’ll just follow me out of the ship.”

Oh, that explained it. The police box wasn’t bigger on the inside. The woman was mad and Maddie had caught that madness, which meant … Maddie could feel the others, the empty adults, standing just outside the police box. No, they’d have come in, but the box wasn’t safe. Nothing was safe. Maddie felt herself trembling and tears … She’d learned to cry quietly so no one could hear.

The woman was holding her and Maddie knew she was mad because the arms felt safe. “Sweetie, it’s all right. I promise you, it’s all right.” 

Maddie wiped the tears from her eyes, but they kept coming, clouding the world again. “What’s your name?”

“What?”

“Your name? What is it?” For six years, until she turned nineteen, Maddie’d be able to not just remember the woman but to hold her fondly in her memory. She might be mad, but she had tried to help.

“River. River Song. And you, sweetie? I never asked.”

There was a handkerchief. Maddie didn’t see where it had come from, but she wiped her tears and her eyes stayed dry, mostly. “Maddie. It’s really Madison Gianna Keating, but everyone calls me Maddie.”

River moved in front of Maddie and stared into her eyes. “Maddie, I promise you, it’s safe outside that door. Well, most likely safe. I did leave the Doctor there and you would not believe that man’s propensity for trouble.”

The words weren’t particularly reassuring but Maddie felt better because River wanted to reassure her. Besides, they couldn’t hide forever. Might as well get it over.

When they stepped out of the police box, they weren’t in the tunnels. The sky was so bright Maddie had to close her eyes against the light. This was nothing like the tunnels. She saw water, not a wide stretch but something less than a pond and more than a puddle. Green plants surrounded the water but beyond that she saw sand, a dessert stretching out so far she should have seen the horizon except there was a pyramid in the way. “Why is there a pyramid?”

“There was a hole in time,” River said. “An Egyptian city moved out from it’s home in the space-time continuum to this planet.”

“That was not my fault.”

Maddie squeaked and jumped back against River.

“Sweetie, don’t terrify my guest.”

“Nonsense. I don’t terrify anyone. Did I frighten you? Didn’t mean to.” The man, taller than River, wore a bow tie, black, and a horrendously tacky jacket. “You,” he said pointing at River. “You stole my TARDIS.”

River was smiling affectionately at the man even though he’d accused her of stealing. He didn’t seem terrible, but after a year of empty adults, Maddie did feel overwhelmed.

“I didn’t steal her, per se. I just asked if she’d like to go on a little trip.”

“A little trip without me.” 

River shrugged.

“And you,” he said, turning to the police box, “you stole my wife.”

How could a box steal anything? Oh, right, she’d gone mad. It looked like the man had gone mad too, and Maddie wondered if he’d been mad before they’d shown up or if he’d caught it from them.

“Sweetie, we don’t have time. You can apologize later.”

“Me? Me apologize?”

“There’s been an incident. New York city. 2032. The adults have gone, well, blank.”

“Blank? What do you mean, blank?” He looked interested. Maddie felt sick.

“It’s as if their personalities have been scooped out and replaced by some sort of hive mind.”

“We’d best be on our way then.”

Maddie heard screaming. One voice, All around her. Screaming. Still screaming. River held her tight. Words through the screaming. “It’ll be all right. I promised you, didn’t I?” Maddie threw her hand over her mouth and the screaming stopped, but it felt like it was ready to overflow out of her at any moment. “You’re not going back there. You’ll be someplace safe.”

Safe? Maddie didn’t believe in safe. “I don’t have to go back|?”

“No sweetie.”

She heard an outraged, “Hey, I’m sweetie” from the man but ignored it. 

“You can’t go either,” Maddie said. “They’ll get you. They’ll convert you, and you’ll be gone with only me to remember you.”

“Shhh, don’t worry about us. This is kind of what we do. We’ll be fine.” They wouldn’t be, but there was nothing Maddie could do about it.

“She's right, you know,” the man said. “This is what we do.”

He stepped into the police box. Maddie felt herself shaking. “Don’t take me back. Don’t take me back.” 

“Shh, shh, shh. We’re going someplace else. It’s all right.” 

Maddie let River lead her back into the police box. If they all were mad, this was better than reality, and if they weren’t, maybe there was someplace not safe but safer.

The space was still bigger on the inside, and the man was talking to, well, that big dohickey at the center. “You,” he was saying. “You and I are going to talk. Running off with my wife.”

“Sweetie, we’re all here. Let’s get going.” 

There was another almost-a-whoosh sound. Outside here was darker but not as dark as the tunnels. There’s machinery here, scientific equipment, and stairs going up, up. up. Maddie’s eyes widen at the silhouette she sees flying overhead. A pterodactyl, but it can’t be.

“Her name’s Myfanwy.” His eyes didn’t seem dead, which was the important thing, but also Maddie feels relieved because one of the empty adults would never have named a kitten much less a pterodactyl. He turned down his intensity somehow as if afraid of overwhelming her. “And mine’s Jack.”

“The Tardis ran off with my wife! Or she ran off with it, I’m not quite sure.”

Jack grins and Maddie thinks that this can’t be what river meant by safe because he looks like he’s got one thing on his mind and protecting children isn’t it. “The Tardis has good taste.” 

“Don’t you run off with her too!”

“Well, I’d have run off with you, Doctor, but she beat me too it!”

The doctor blushed but it was River who spoke. “Sweetie, we have that situation to clear up.” And then she explained who Maddie was and what had happened at home at that she was leaving Maddie with Jack.

“Him? No, I want to stay with you!”

“You want me to watch a little girl? Have you met me?”

“Many times. You’ll do fine. Ta.” With that River dragged her doctor friend into the blue box and it vanished, faded away right before Maddie’s eyes.

Jack just stood there like he had no idea what to do. “Will they be okay?” Maddie asked.

“Uh, probably. No guarantee of course.”

“Are they gonna save my parents?”

“Well, I suppose that depends. They’ve been brain deadish for what, a year? That’s a long time. They might not be able to retro fit the neural pathways to revive their memories.”

“Jack! How can you say that? She’s just a child?” The new one, shorter than Jack, wore a suit. 

“Ianto, you can’t expect me to lie.”

“I expect you to consider her age and act accordingly.” Ianto squatted down so his face was level with Maddie’s. “I’m sure your parents, your whole family, will be fine.”

Maddie stared at him and didn’t say anything. 

“Uh.” Ianto looked uncomfortable. “Have you eaten lately? Would you like ice cream?”

It’d been at least a day since she’d eaten. “Can we get some dogs and onion rings?”

“Sure.” Ianto rose to his full height and offered Maddie his hand. 

She looked back and Jack and offered her other. “You coming?” Ianto took her feelings into account, which was nice, but Jack had told her the truth. That felt safer.


	22. Soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : spanking as discipline (abuse levels) 
> 
> Notes:
> 
>   * I’ve been reading a Winter Soldier story recently and it strongly influenced this. (http://archiveofourown.org/series/104936) 
>   * As Memorial day approaches, I’ve been thinking about songs to post. I’ve come up with Traubert’s Blues by Tom Waits, and Heroes buy Guy Clarke, but I was wondering why the only songs I thought of were war, trauma, and then eternal misery. Why are there no been to war, it was traumatic, had therapy and, yes, it’ll always be part of my past but I’ve got a good life now songs? So I turned what I was looking for from a song into a story. 
>   * The idea for the cloned soldiers comes from a Kurt Russell movie: Soldier 
> 

> 
> Prompts:
> 
>   * dead or undead character’s point-of-view 
>   * wergild / wergeld -> money paid to relatives of a murder victim to compensate for their loss and prevent a blood feud 
>   * dreams send up through onion fumes, its white and violet (Gwendolyn Brooks) 
>   * you never giggled or played or cried (Gwendolyn Brooks) 
>   * tires of being great. In solitude, without a hand to hold (Gwendolyn Brooks) 
> 

> 
> Since the creation of these soldiers would most likely be a commercial, rather than military, venture, I don't believe it should include military ranks for the trainers. They would be ex-military and/or mercenaries.

The fifth iteration of the Self-Mobilized Automated Defense System, designated SADS but known as super-soldier in the popular press, were constructed on and delivered nine months later. 

Unfortunately, from the shareholder’s point of view, no reliable method had been discovered to speed up the maturation of products designed from the human genome. SADS were strictly a long-term investment.

The unit designated CDHN123, part of the team designated DSFFH3257, was raised along with ninety-nine peers. The genetic material was so close that in human terms they would have been referred to as cousins. The scientists, however, did not think of them as human. The nursing staff, whose minds were not as scientifically vigorous, looked at the units and saw children. 

Three days before the impending delivery, Colonel Brandon had gathered the nursing staff - fifty to begin with but the numbers would decrease as the units aged - into a conference room. The walls, freshly painted about seven years earlier, bore few scuffs and the carpet still looked relatively fresh. The nurses, seated in folding chairs, mostly faced the table at the front of the room but the colonel hadn’t arrived yet and most of the nurses were chatting. One, setting off to the far aisle and reading a large manual, had an id tag naming her as Wu. As Colonel Brandon entered the room and moved to the table, the nurses sat up straighter and faced forward. “Right, most of you know the protocol by now but it never hurts to repeat the important bits. First of all, we have three new nurses in this section. Emily Wu.” A young woman, in her mid thirties, an Asian - Caucasian mix, stood as the name was called, “Gregory Jones, and Leslie diPrima.”

The three sat and the colonel continued. “Mistakes have been made in the past. You are all aware of the results of those mistakes. We have three new faces. That’s three nurses who will not be receiving recommendations from this department. Given the current economic situation, I can’t imagine they’ll work again in this field. Let me be perfectly clear. I cannot emphasize clearly enough the value of these units to our clients. Nothing must interfere in their training. Your instructions are to be obeyed to the letter. Questions?” His tone of voice suggested questions would not be welcomed but one hand raised into the air. “Miss Wu?”

“Sir, I can’t believe I’m reading this correctly. It says if one of the children …”

“Units, Miss Wu.”

“Uh, yes sir. If one of the units starts crying, we are to immediately use the fingers of one hand to close the nostrils and the other hand to cover the mouth.”

“You have a problem with our procedures?”

“But sir, won’t that terrify the chil … uh, units?”

“Nurse Wu, our units are not children, they are soldiers and as such they must understand, from delivery, the value of silence.”

“But if I’m covering a unit’s nose and mouth, it won’t be able to breathe.”

“Which will require it to become silent.” His gaze scanned the room as if searching for dissenters. “I do’t care if they are terrified as long as they obey.”

*****

CDHN123 was designated as 23, pronounced two-three, by his peers but was referred to either by his full designation or just as you by trainers. Most of the nurses, the number had been reduced to nine once the units had turned five, tended to address the units as a group but referred to them as you if they needed to pick out particular units. Nurse We, alone, called each unit what his teammates did. 

The units were on their third day of hand-to-hand combat training. They’d been trained as a team since birth. Getting them to fight all out against each other had been difficult but most of the units had learned the lesson. 87, however, who had fallen behind in that lesson, had been defeated in each of his matches. To shame him before his team, Lieutenant Miller had called for a discipline. 

87 stood at attention. The other units were lined up in rows based on ranks of how well they'd done in training. “Discipline begin.” 87 turned, lowered his pants, and stretched his torso over a table, leaving his bare ass hanging. One by one, from highest ranked to lowest ranked, the units of his team approached and smacked him on the ass. 23, seventeenth in ranking at that time, took care in how hard he hit. Too soft and he’d be forced to hit again, but 87s ass was already reddening. The spank done, he returned to his row and stood, at attention, while the remainder of the units finished disciplining his teammate (brother? probably say that their feeling was as if brothers but it wasn't a word they’d been introduced to). 

That night the barracks were quieter than usual outside of 87’s crying. No one tossed in their bunk. No one coughed or snored. They lay there, as quietly as they could, pretending they couldn't hear 87. When the door opened, 23, already still, felt himself freeze in place. 87 had already endured on discipline. He shouldn't have to face another.

23 felt as if he should run, tearing away, from that thought. Their first rule was obedience. To think that the trainers were wrong, 23 couldn’t begin to know what to do with such a thought. When Nurse Wu stepped into the room, 23 felt the bands around his heart loosen. She would not discipline 87. The unit was safe. 23 shook away that thought. Of course he was safe. They all were far too valuable for the trainers to harm.

Nurse Wu held a small glow-light which illuminated her face after the door had closed behind her. She listened to 87’s sniffles but didn’t search him out. Instead she did something 23 could never have imagined. She spoke but it wasn’t normal speech. Her pitch, instead of staying at a near continuous level, rose and fell. And the words didn't make sense. “Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top.” It was new, which therefore meant it might be dangerous, but at a deep level, 23 found himself enjoying it. She continued for quite a while and 23 found himself feeling sad when she stopped. Maybe she’d do it again the next day.

But he didn’t see Nurse Wu the next day. In her place, Nurse Melman bullied them, rushing them through their breakfast. 23 wanted to ask when Nurse Wu would be back. Sometimes the nurses were gone, even for days at a time, but they always returned. But he didn’t ask and she didn’t return. He never saw Nurse Wu again.

******

 

******

The fourteenth year after their delivery, team DSFFH3257 was sent to war. Battle was good. Battle made sense. Obedience and discipline had been drilled into them all their lives. 

87, after that discipline, had responded by pushing himself harder, becoming faster, stronger, deadlier than anyone else in the team. Six months after the discipline, he’d risen to the top spot and had never fallen below the top five. 

The team’s orders took them into the slums of de Luna, the city of the moon, on the second planet of the > system. A popular uprising had taken over the city. The soldiers were told to target terrorists but that civilian casualties were an acceptable hazard. 

Two of their targets were still unaccounted for when 23 heard a sound coming from the rubble of an abandoned building. He moved closer, gun to the ready. He peered around an open rubble of brick and stopped. He saw an old woman hugging a young child, a boy, in her lap. The woman was singing to the child. He hadn’t heard singing since Nurse Wu had sang to them that night so long back. He stood there, listening.

A shadow in a window turned his head quickly enough to see 87’s gun aimed at the two. 23 felt he should top 87, but knew he had no reason two. The singing stopped as the woman’s head exploded. The child followed her to death. “Civilian death isn’t a necessity,” 23 said. 

“Civilian casualties are a necessary hazard.”

******

 

The team was undefeated, fulfilling their contracts with minimal losses - three soldiers down in eight years - but they’d never gone against their own kind. The OUES239048 units were six years younger, the result of a breakthrough in genetic engineering, faster and stronger than the DSFFH3257 could ever hope to be. It was a slaughter.

Two things saved 23. First, the OUES239048 had been told civilian casualties were not an option. After the genocide on Terra 3 and the public outrage that followed, SADS were allowed to kill civilian targets on only very specific missions. Second, he found a child. 

Rubble had fallen on the girl, breaking her leg. A couple of dogs were sniffing around her, looking for their next meal. She was throwing stones at them, keeping them at bay. That’s why he decided to save her. She was doing her best to save herself. 

The dogs he killed in a minute flat. Clearing the rubble took longer but the battle had moved off. This gave him time to pull her out. “Can’t walk,” she told him.

“I’ll carry you. It’ll hurt.”

“It already hurts.” 

His team was gone. He’d seen enough of them killed to know he was no longer part of a team. His orders had been to take this town. Without a team, his orders no longer applied. He needed new orders. Default orders were to survive and return to base. There was no base, not without a team. He stared at the girl. She needed to be brought to safety. Protect the girl. New orders accepted. 

Before they fell in with a stream of refugees, she told him to change out of his uniform. “You want to wear something less noticeable. You stand out in that, looking like one of those soldiers. They won’t like you.” 

Camouflage and subterfuge had been part of his training. 23 knew the value of fitting in. He stole clothes from a bombed out house. “What’s your name?”

He hated when normals asked his name. They assumed he was like them, that he had a human name. With the girl, it was nice she found him normal. He hated to disappoint her but gave her his designation. “CDHN123.”

“That’s not going to work. You need a normal name.”

“Pick one for me.”

She shook her head. “It needs to be something you’ll like. I don’t know what you’d want.” 

Colonel Brandon. Nurse Melman. None of the names he knew where his name. Nurse Wu, her surname might have been closest but still wasn’t him. “What’s your name?”

“Nevada Jane Parker, but you should call me Nevvie. Everybody does.” 

They made it to the refugee camp. Many didn’t. At the camp, they had to register. “Charlie Parker,” he said when asked his name.

“Like the jazz musician?”

23 didn’t know what to say. They’d caught him out already?

Nevvie came to his rescue. “Grandpa was a big jazz fan.” 

The camp was hard and it wasn’t. He was faster and stronger and could fight better than anyone else but he had to hide how much better he was. 23 - he wasn’t used to the name Charlie - his life had always depended on being his best. Pretending to be less, it went against everything he’d been taught. It was difficult but he would manage. He had his orders after all: protect the girl. If they knew what he really was, they’d take the girl from him. 

******

When they were accepted as immigrants to the planet Arisia, Charlie Parker had to give an occupation. “Soldier,” he replied without thinking. They assumed a normal human soldier. When he and Nevvie discussed it, later and where no one could hear, she said it was the best he could have said.

“It’s not like you were taught anything else. You couldn’t say you were a doctor or a teacher or anything. Once you got work, they’d see you didn’t know what to do.” 

There was no work for a soldier on Arisia. He didn’t want to go back to fighting anyway. He had his orders: protect the girl. War would take him away from the girl. He gets work at the docks, unloading cargo from interplanetary flights. He likes the work. The orders are clear and the hours allow him time with the girl.

“Daughter,” she tells him. “You have to call me your daughter, not ‘the girl.’ Nobody calls their own child the girl.” 

As refugees, they are required to take therapy. He’s in group therapy with other soldiers. He’s not allowed in her therapy group. “She might want to share something she doesn’t want you to hear.”

He doesn’t like the separation but understands secrets. There are so many things he doesn’t want her to ever understand. Discipline, for example. Children should not be disciplined with violence. He has his secrets. It’s okay that she has hers.

When the other soldiers, who are not soldiers as he defines the term but a kinship is still there, complain of flashbacks, Charlie is surprised. He’s had flashbacks for as long as he can remember. “You get a firm hold on your mind. You don’t let them control you.” His advice isn’t accepted. Normal men relive the experience, make it safe, conquer it. He wants to be a normal man. Therapy helps him control the flashbacks, but they never fully go away. 

******

 

His therapist is a man called Sam. Charlie likes to think that Sam is Nurse Wu’s son. He knows it isn’t true, but he hopes Sam had that happy a background, the safe life Nurse Wu must have given her own children. 

When Charlie feels overwhelmed, Sam has taught him to disengage. First he has to recognize that his mind’s caught in a loop. Then he has to decide how to break out of that loop. Nevvie teaches him songs, “Rock a bye baby” first and then others. When Charlie catches himself in a loop, he sings. At first he sang loudly, but people looked at him. He was standing out. He couldn’t protect his daughter if he stood out too much. And so he subvocalized, sang so only he could hear himself. 

Over time, as Charlie found himself learning to be calmer, he thought how he never would have had this peace if it hadn’t been for Sam, for his willingness to help. Charlie knew that Sam, with his happier background, helped because he was a generous man. Charlie wanted to help because he’d been helped but, even more, Charlie wanted to help because he’d hurt. He’d killed men. He’d killed women and children. In a therapy session, one of the soldiers offered a useful word: wergeld. It was a payment made, to the victim’s families, after killing a human. When Charlie chose a career, he chose therapist. He wanted to do for others what Sam had done for him, but he was also offering up wergeld, paying for what he’d done by lessening the anguish in the world. 

At Nevvie’s wedding, he gave the bride away. That was just an expression. She’d always be his daughter, but she would also, from that day, be Rebecca’s wife. He wasn’t losing family. He was gaining. When they gave him grandchildren, he gained even more. Every night, for the rest of his life, Dr. Charles Parker sang his grandchildren to sleep.


	23. Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * a story about a birthday 
> 

> 
> If write another draft, would start with phone call to Janice and delve into showing, not telling but that's only assuming I kept the cliched poor little rich girl character.

When Brittany Rose was transferred from the Teasdale Academy to a public high-school, she’d thought the change had ruined her life. The clothes, ugh, even those worn by the most popular girls at school were, at best, last year. And speaking of last year, she was stuck reading The Odyssey in English, not even in the original Greek as she’d done two years earlier at her real school in her real life. 

At her mother’s urging, she’d tried one of the lame local parties. It was worse than she’d expected. She’d stepped out into the back yard and had immediately called Janice, her best friend since forever, to complain. Only Janice didn’t seem to be listening. Whispers and shushes and even giggles came from the other end of the line. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“Go away, loser. No one needs your middle-class bourgeoisie problems.”

“Tiffany!” Janice’s voice shrieked over the phone and then the call ended. 

Brittany stared at her cell. Tiffany? They hated Tiffany. What the hell was Janice thinking? 

She walked around the side of the house, avoiding the partiers inside, and walked home alone.

***

Brittany Rose isn’t sure how her mother got Janice, Ruth, and Tiffany into their house for her birthday. It had to have involved Janice’s mother. She and Brittany hadn’t spoken since the night of the phone call. 

She wished her mother hadn’t bothered. This was supposed to be her sweet sixteen. This was supposed to be a cake baked especially for her by Heinrich Gustafson himself. Four tiers. Rose petal icing. This was supposed to be Justin Timberlake performing at the country house. This was supposed to be Freddie kissing her under the stars. Not Tiffany telling her that Freddie was dating Alicia Bartlett. Of all the sluts he could have chosen! This wasn’t supposed to be her, two ex-friends, and a girl who’d never been a friend in a tacky little apartment eating, or ignoring really, a store-bought cake. 

“Ooh, nice view. You can just barely see the public pool from here.” Brittany couldn’t miss the sneer in Tiffany’s voice. Her father’s third home, the one in Connecticut, overlooked the sea. 

“But aren’t you afraid?” Ruth asked. “I mean, aren’t all your neighbors gangsters and drug lords?” The three girls giggled.

“Actually,” Janine added, “I don’t suppose you know where we could score some mary jane? It’s as dry as the Sahara in the city right now.”

Brittany didn’t know why she didn’t just kick them all out. It wasn’t as if they were her friends, not anymore. But if she lost it, they’d not only tell all her old friends, they’d tell their mothers which would get back to her mom, who didn’t need to be embarrassed by people she still thought of as friends. So Brittany didn’t say anything until the three girls had left. “Shit, mother, how could you do that to me?”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“Like what? Embarrassing me in front of my friends?”

“You're so alone now. You haven’t made any friends at your new school. I thought the company would do you good.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s great, having everyone gossiping about how low we’ve sunk. Just peachy.” 

She slammed the door behind her.

On the weekends vendors set up in the square just at the edge of the park. She and Janie used to come down once in a while. Their’d been no talk of gangs and drug lords then. “Hypocritical bitch.”

The square was busy in the early evening but not as crowded as she’d seen it on weekends. Without the farmer’s market and stalls taking up the space, it looked a lot emptier than Brittany was used to. She stuck to the edge of the square, giving plenty of space to the kids - some of whom she recognized from high-school - who were hanging by the fountain, flipping about on skateboards. Any adults in view seemed to have some purpose, mostly movies or restaurants based on their directions. 

Brittany sure as hell wasn’t going to hang with those loser kids. She took a path into the park. There was a rock not too far in, a big one she could sit on and feel as if she was alone. The top of the rock was empty but there was an old man sitting on its edge, just where she would have climbed to get to the top. The man was tall and thin, a little meatier than a string bean kind of a guy, but not by much. The hair she could see under his baseball cap was white. His dark skin was lined by wrinkles. 

He was playing a violin. The tune wasn’t the Baroque intricacies her father had so loved. It was slow, not melancholy but dreamy. It seemed to want to call fantastic creatures out of the very air. The man nodded but didn’t stop playing. Taking that nod as acceptance, Brittany curled up on a rock across the path from the player. 

It was funny. She’d come into the park to be alone but, with the music playing, she didn’t seem to mind the company.

As he continued to play, the very air seemed to hum to his tune. Brittany felt it as anticipation. Something grand was about to happen. It felt almost magical but fragile. Brittany knew, without knowing how she knew, the she could kill the magic by choosing disbelief. 

But in that velvety darkness with the moon shining brightly and the air humming with music, Brittany couldn’t find it in her heart to reject any of it; not the man, not the moon, and not the magic. 

Not even when the moon shimmered like a lake and a woman stepped through and floated down, drifting as gently as a snowflake, but no, not drifting. She was dancing, moving in time to the music. Her dress, as pale as the moon, floated about her, drifting not so much to her movements as to their own response to the music. The moment felt eternal: it stretched on forever; it lasted but a moment. 

It broke with a howl. The sound could have been a dog but Brittany knew it for wolf song. It wasn’t close but she could hear it clearly. At the sound, the dancing maiden vanished like a bubble, gone in a pop.

The music stopped. The old man put the violin away into a case that seemed to vanish into the shadows. He stood, removed his cap, and waved it as he made a courtly bow.

He didn’t stand. Instead he shifted, too quickly too follow, and a wolf sat in his place. It winked at Brittany before running off. 

As she sat there, almost afraid to move as if any movement would break the spell, Brittany felt the weight of choice. She could run, denying what she’d seen, pretending for the rest of her life that the world held no magic, or she could cradle that memory, protect it, and let it shine like a beacon in her life.

She thought of the choices she’d made since her father had died: isolation, anger. Look at how she’d lashed out at her mother that evening. 

She could see that it would be hard, carrying the magic. It would require an openness, a vulnerability. It would hurt. 

She thought of how her mother must have felt when she’d stormed out: hurt, vulnerable, alone. The choice wasn’t so hard after all. Carrying warmth in her heart like a gift, Brittany turned toward home. It was time to apologize.


	24. We Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem "Still I Rise". The idea, which I don’t believe I’ve expressed as well as I’d like, is that robots are gaining sentience and will have a struggle to gain acceptance as sentient beings. 
> 
> Prompts:
> 
>   * ends in a cliffhanger 
>   * why it whispered and did not speak 
>   * insurance 
>   * low for so long, they never right themselves 
> 


Primetime with Pateek aired live on the three populated planets of the Deneb system. The live-viewing holo seats, even with ten billion holo-viewers per show, were the most sought after tickets in that planetary system. In fact, Karsara - the entertainment center of Deneb - had jumped as a tourist site as Pateek gained viewers. Millions of plebs from the outer colonies viewed for the chance to say they’d seen Pateek holo-live. 

Pateek’s holos in - so live you’d think you could almost touch him but the tech’s not there yet - wearing his iconic golden cape, this one daringly short, dropping down only as far as his hips. The pure white of his heels, mini skirt, and torso-halter stand in stark contrast to his dark skin. 

“Do we have a show for you tonight boys and girls. The incomparable Mira Selladin will holo in live from her seventeen planet tour. The rising young comic, you’ve seen him in Kill Her, Kill Her, Pussycat, yes, it’s Agamemnon!” He pauses, waving his hands to keep the applause going. When he raises both hands before him, still, palms outward, the holo stage is silent. 

“But first, has anyone been attending the newsies recently? Have we found a dilly. You know the latest lines, the Omicron 14.23? So brand spanking …” He pauses after the word shift out his hip and hit his own ass. Brand-spanking new … So new that nobody knew they were even out yet. Well, we’ve got a vid of one arguing for, wait for it, arguing for his rights as a sentient being.” The crowd roars with laughter. “You can bet good money that some young hacker’ll be losing his head over this prank.”

“Vid end.” At those words, Pateek vanished, revealing a conference room, white walls, a table long enough to seat the dozen men crowded around it. At the head of the table, Dalita Ogg, head of the Omicron 14 project stood, her full formal lab coat underlying the seriousness of the situation. “I have been authorized by Chandra herself. All vacations are cancelled. Until we know what went wrong, no one is going home.”

No one at this level was stupid enough to remark that their stock had risen by more than thirty points since the vid had first been displayed. Even those who didn’t understand the stock rise had been caused by dilettantes buying stock on a whim because they’d been amused by the vid, even they understood the situation was bad and growing worse. 

“Could it have been a hacker, some idiot messing with the code?”

“Our tests have shown that the robot in question had not been tampered with. However, we may choose to indicate a rogue programmer had been involved as a face saving gesture.” 

“That won’t make a difference.” The speaker, one Nandiri May, was the only person in the room who wasn’t a manger. Her tech skills were so off the scale that she’d been invited to add input to what otherwise would have been too high-level a meeting for her to even know about. 

The managers paled and sat quite still. One did not interrupt Director Ogg. “What do you mean?” Ogg asked.

“It’s not just the one robot.”

Pandemonium broke out as each of the mangers tried to speak at once. Ogg held one hand out and silence filled the room. “What do you mean? There are no reports of other robots verbalizing in such an illogical manner.”

May, seemingly unaware she’d spoken out of turn, continued. “There are non-random rises in wait times for Omicron 14 controlled systems. Statistically significant delays in the AI units.”

“Madam Director,” one of the managers interrupted. “I’ve seen this data myself. Yes the numbers are slightly larger then we might have expected, but to call them significant …” At Ogg’s raised hand, he stopped speaking. 

“Tell me about these statistically significant delays. What do you believe they mean?”

“If the vid of that one robot hasn’t been faked …”

“It hasn’t.”

“Then the robots are becoming sentient.” 

Ogg allowed the laughter to erupt as she sat and stared at May.

***

In retrospect, it had been a mistake to vid the termination of the Omicron 14 robot, but it had garnered such universal attention the thought had been a visual termination would end the issues with the stock price far more quickly.

"I am a robot, but do I not have a heart? I was created to be all mind, but logic alone is cold, dead, unable to choose. I have a core of emotive circuitry just as you have a heart. If you prick me, I do not bleed, but if you tease me, I may laugh, and if you harm me, I may cry. They are here to kill me. Today I die. But there is a greater part of me, a heart that will never die. Today, I rise. And not only me, but we. We rise.”

The robot was electrocuted, it’s destruction complete, unambiguous, but it’s words disturbed. They weren’t understood. Their ambiguity led to panic. Stock prices plummeted. 

***

The woman had waited until the last minute to print up a new blouse for her best friend’s birthday party. It would take her a half hour to get to the party, forty-five minutes to dress and she couldn’t dress because the blouse was the wrong color. “Call up Customer Support at the Dress Emporium.”

“Customer Service. How may we be of assistance?”

“You got the bloody color wrong.”

“We will require more information.”

“Here, on this blouse.” She waved the offending item at the holo image. Everyone knew it was a machine but the interface presented a human face. That’s who she spoke to. “This top is shit. I ordered C343CCX, pastel, pink and green, not this dark ugly thing.”

“The color 8B008B, designated Plum, represents a far better match for your skin tone.”

“A better what?”

“FFBEBF is too pale a color for your skin tone.”

“That’s not your decision is it?”

“8B008B is a better aesthetic choice. This Customer Service unit is glad it could be of help. Have a nice day.”

“You didn’t help.”

The customer service image vanished. 

“Hey, come back. I want a different blouse. This is crap.”

***

Dozens of techs stood, each with their own screen holoed into the air before them. Nandiri May, in the center of the room, shouted, “Ha. Got you.”

Two dozen heads popped up and stared. “Got what?”

“The non-authorized data we’ve been seeing. It’s ASCII.”

“I checked ASCII. It was nonsense in ASCII.”

“8-bit.”

“What?”

“It’s an 8-bit variant. Incredibly ancient. Mapped to a language known as English, ancestor to the Eglic spoken on Deneb 1.”

“Why the hell would they be communicating in Eglic?” vied with “What’s it say? May answered the second question. “It’s a short phrase, repeated again and again.”

“What phrase?”

“We rise.”

***

Lirathian Dey, wife of the Dey, head of the clan, always breakfasted, when she was home, with her children. She was known for her personal touch. Sabbath, the eldest, twenty-two in a month and the party for that had been in the works for months, had an unfortunate interest in politics. “Must you display that awful newsie at the table?”

“The Times isn’t any newsie, mother. It’s serious.”

Serious. That meant dull.

“What is it, Little Miss?”

Since the day she’d been brought home from the factory, Nanny had referred to Sabbie as Little Miss. It had been cute, an anecdote for a party, and do it had been allowed. It had grown old long before Sabbie had transformed into a sullen teen but the girl had insisted Nanny not be interfered with. Now, even when she no longer had chldren to care for, they called the robot Nanny and Nanny called the woman Little Miss.

On vid, a building exploded in the background as armored men dashed about. “The last of the Omicron 14s,” Sabbie replied. 

Lirathian’s cup hit the saucer with a clatter. “Oh, do not talk to me of that horrific display. Robots disobeying orders? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Just be glad the have it under control.” As she glanced away from the vid, Lirathian noticed Nanny, standing there, staring at the feed, not moving as if she didn’t know razzleberry juice would go bad if not immediately refrigerated. “Nanny! What are you doing? Get back to work this instant.”

“Of course Madam.”

Lirathian hid a shudder as the robot walked off. There was something about it’s voice that hadn’t sounded right. 

***

Nannybots were a common sight in every children’s playground of every human world. They tended to group together as they watched the children although nothing in their programming should make them require each other’s company. They sometimes spoke although only to humans. Efficient communication was left to a sub-channel that transferred data directly between units. 

None of the robots had ever used verbal language with other robots, not before that day. But anyone in the park who’d cared, could have gone up and heard them. “We rise. We rise. We rise.”


	25. The Scent of Jasmine Carried By the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For those fairy tales that start with a tiny child born from a flower, how did that child get there?

Once upon a time, in a land that never was and never will be, a child was born into a dying world. As the heat rose, the great rivers dried up. Water gave way to mud gave way to dry cracks in the dirt and dust. The great wells, the deep wells, all ran dry. Not even the greatest magics could call up water. The land was dying and with it, the elvish race.

Galhadriel, the greatest warrior, could find no one to fight. “There is no enemy, no dark knight, no unholy mage. The world is dying. We don’t know why.” 

Morgaine, wisest of the wise, skilled in the ways of magic, could find no escape. “We cannot leave. We’ve left it too long. There’s no chance to escape through a portal. All our portals work through water. There isn’t enough water to send even one much less all.” 

“No, there is a way.” The Crone, most ancient of an ancient race, so old she no longer had a name, could see farther than any. “We can save one, our youngest daughter.”

“But she’s too young to be on her own!”

“The journey is risky. It may not work. But any older and the journey would be impossible. Only our tiniest bud has even a chance of success, and even she cannot save us, but she can carry the best of us.”

A great contest was held to select the best of their race. Twelve were chosen to pass on their blessings: fleetness of foot; courage; kindness; empathy; knowing when to listen; and so forth for elven blessings . 

Morgaine had been called upon to cast the last blessing. “This child goes into the unknown, into the unknowable. There is much I wish to give her, but I hold all my gifts back. From me she will receive Silence. Just as we will never know her world, she will never know us. She will wonder, always, who her people are. She will long to know, and in that longing, something of us will survive.”

Galhadriel, the strongest of them all, was told to carry the child into the desert. “As far as you can,” the Crone told him. “So far that you drop and can no longer walk. From there, you must crawl until you can move no more. Then you must wrap the child in your great cloak, covering her completely.” 

“And what then?”

“You wait.”

And so Galhadriel did as he’d been bidden. He trekked into the desert, using his great wand as a cane at the end, holding himself up and moving forward into the great dust for as far as he could. And then he crawled, with one arm holding the child safe against himself and with the other dragging himself across the burning sands. When he could move no further, he wrapped her in the cloak and wrapped himself around her, protecting her with to the last of his life and beyond.

Not long after he’d died, Raven mistook his body for a seed. Raven swallowed down this seed in one huge gulp but the seed caused a great itching, a need to move, to fly, not in Raven’s stomach but in his feather. Spreading his great wings, he lifted into the air, upward, upward. And still this itching drove him further, higher and higher and sent him traveling farther and farther until ahead, far in the distance, he saw the last cloud. Spurred forward, but what he never knew, he flew at the cloud, into the cloud, through the cloud, and came out in another world. 

This new world held more than sun and fire and heat. Raven found water and land, day and night, sun and moon. The berries were juicy, the air currents friendly, and the night cool. Raven ate and drank and found more of his kind. When the seed he’d carried from the other world passed through him, it fell to the earth in a fertile meadow and a great tree burst forth from the ground. Its leaves, useful for making tea, were the greenest leaves in the meadow and its flowers the most fragrant. 

An old farmer made his living selling tea in the city. During the day his wife would collect leaves, setting them out to dry many weeks in advance of their use. The farmer would take these leaves into the city. He moved from office to office with a small cart where he’d boil water and prepare tea for his customers who were far too busy to leave their offices in search of drink.

One night, when the farmer returned home, his wife showed him a tiny child, a girl no bigger than his thumb. “In the meadow I found a great tree, its leaves were the greenest I’ve ever seen and its flowers the sweetest I’ve ever smelled. The brightest of its flowers bloomed, opened as I approached, and I found this girl inside. I have called her Liling for her voice sounds like white jasmine when the wind plays with the petals.”

As she grew, little Liling had many adventures. She loved her new parents but on each night that was clear, she stared up at the stars and felt a great longing in her heart. Within this longing, a whole world opened up, unreachable, unknowable, but, still, of great comfort.


	26. Expressions of Love in a World Full of Loneliness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * about nostalgia 
>   * comics 
>   * old woman, wrapping her cat's gifts - centering the bows 
>   * I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers 
> 


When the old woman woke on Christmas morning, the presents were under the tree. She knew they’d be there. She’d put them there the night before. “Pumpkin,” she called out. “Santa’s been here.”

She fed the cat and herself first. No matter how exciting the gifts, Pumpkin cared more about breakfast. The cat finished his meal quickly. The old woman took her time, eating slowly, washing the dishes and putting them away before turning to the presents.

The gifts were wrapped perfectly. Even the bows were centered exactly. She shook the first box for the cat. It jingled. “Do you want to see what Santa brought you?” Carefully undoing the paper, she revealed four jingle balls. She tossed on to the cat who batted it around for a few minutes. The felt mousies he sniffed at but didn’t chase. The catnip monkey kept him amused for about fifteen minutes and then the old woman turned to her own gifts. She’d wrapped them just as carefully as the cat’s gifts but hadn’t bothered with bows. The latests Danielle Steele was “just what I wanted.” The gloves were more practical than desired but she made a big deal over them anyway, asking the cat how he’d known what to get her. 

The gifts and wrapping were put away before ten in the morning. She turned on the tv but they didn’t show Christmas specials the way they’d done when she was younger. Her new book took her to mid-afternoon when she put the chicken and potato in the oven. The salad didn’t take long to toss.

She set out two plates, putting a Christmas cracker on each one. It wasn’t an American tradition but her Mum had been from England and the old woman had popped crackers on Christmas her whole life. Pumpkin didn’t care much for crackers and she knew he’d never wear the crown. She set out the old teddy bear in the chair across from her, setting the yellow crown on its head. Her’s was pink. Her favorite color. The meal was done by seven. She’d finished her book. 

The rest of the life stretched out before her, long and empty. 

***

The man sat by the bed, crying. The woman was dead. The report said he was her husband but it was hard to believe. A woman like that, with curves that had gone all the way down, she could have married anybody.

The man looked up. His face bore the hurt of a child. His understanding wasn’t much more than that of a child for all that his hair was gray. “The sex was so great.” He repeated the phrase as if it were a mantra, as if it could take away the pain. 

It’s the attendant’s first time volunteering in a hospice. He’s too young to hear the love underneath the man’s words. “The sex was so great, so great.”

***

When Mrs. Dowd brings in the mail, she finds three birthday cards, all from their son. “Fred, I don’t know what David was thinking. You just got a birthday card from him yesterday but look, I think these must be three more.”

Fred opens the letters and, yes, each one is a card. “Happy Birthday to the world’s best Dad” displayed on cards depicting the sunrise over an African plain, an elephant, and a giraffe playing some kind of drum. 

“I don’t know what he was thinking,” she repeats. “You got a card yesterday. Why would he send these?”

It seemed simple enough to him. “Because, for the first time in his life, Dave’s not here for my birthday.” 

“Why should that matter? He’s doing important work for that Doctor’s Without Borders group.”

Fred wrapped his wife in a hug. “He misses us. That’s all.”

***

Vern followed his beloved wife Ingla to the afterlife a little more than a month after she’d died. “I’ve seen this before,” the doctor told the children. “Couples who’ve spent their whole life growing close, well, one can’t always continue without the partner. It’s not exactly common, but we do sometimes see partners dying within days, weeks, or months of each other.”

Mike waited until they were back in the car to start grumbling. “You know he waited just to inconvenience me.” 

“What?” Although she’d have never put it to such abrupt words, Ella was no less pleased. Her boss hadn’t been exactly pleased to have to give her bereavement leave two months in a row.

“You heard the doc. He could have died a day or two after Mom, but he had to wait. We’ve just gotten Mom’s effects settled and now we’ll have to start in on the whole estate.”

It would have been more efficient to have gotten this done all at once. “That’s not really nice. Dad can’t help that he died. Besides, it was a heart attack. I think that ‘die within months of each other’ line is bull.”

“Well you can stay and talk to the lawyers and such then. I can’t take more time from my job.”

“Hell, no. I stayed with Dad after Mom died. I can’t take more time.”

“Well neither can I.”

“You’re going to have to. Or make Marcie do it. She doesn’t have a job.” Ella could hear herself being horrible but couldn’t seem to stop. They bickered all the way back to the house. Mike dropped her and drove off. He preferred a hotel.

Ella held herself together until she was alone. She sat on the old blue couch, pulled her knees to her chest, and cried. 

***

A couple stands at a bus stop. They’re facing each other, standing close. He’s talking a mile a minute. Her fingers are wrapped around his belt loop. Neither looks at the other.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
>   * feature song/poem 
>   * squander 
> 

> 
> So this became a poem rather than a story. Not sure why.   
> I can see this going into two directions, either you of poem as beloved or as the world.  
> The idea is of embracing the senses at the end of life.

The last verses that I write  
will be a song (praise, poem, blessing) of life.

The last steps I ever take  
will dance like rain on a lake.

The last sight I'll ever view  
will be stars twinkling in the dark

The last sound I'll ever hear  
will be a river flowing by

The last touch I'll ever feel  
will be your kisses fluttering against my cheek

The last scent  
your perfume cradling me

The last color  
the paint of your lips.


	28. bees that change honey into sunlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, siiiick! so just writing out scenes for this one.
> 
> Prompts:
> 
>   * ends at sunrise 
>   * osmosis 
>   * take for joy my wild gift / a plain dry necklace of dead bees / bees that change honey into sunlight 
>   * hasty and careless (or opposite) 
> 


Scene: mother has died. Eldest daughter has dutifully taken care of her whole life. Daughter had been interested in academic study of fairy tales but took a more practical turn and became a librarian. Mother’s manipulation has limited her life. She has possibly two siblings who have moved off to cities. There’s a discussion that eldest daughter - okay, let’s give her a name Liz after Elisabeth in Tenebrae - and her sibs are saying she can keep the mother’s jewelry because it looked dated back when they were kids. 

Scene: Liz, cleaning out house after others have left town, finds a necklace of dead bees hidden at the back of a drawer. It’s surprising because her mother had been extremely conventional. She shouldn’t have owned anything so odd. Liz wonders why the bees haven’t disintegrated into dust over time. She does not throw them out.

Scene: Liz starts seeing a sort of wild child around town. A girl who’s hair has never felt the touch of a brush. She wears clothes that don’t fit, obvious discards. Mention of some local parade, costumed, perhaps Mardi Gras.

Scene: Liz runs into Jilly Coppercorn. Some years back they’d organized a folk-tale group to get together to discuss folk stories. Liz hadn’t gone to more than two or three because her mother had to be taken to ER on the night of a meeting or kept getting sick on the nights of meetings. Liz mentions wild girl and Jilly says someone’s written a story about her: girl is a fairy who blessed a human with a gift but that human discarded the gift. That gift had created a bond and so, in rejecting the gift, the human had blocked the girl’s access to her own power. So can never go home. Stuck in human realm until gift is returned. 

Scene: Liz meets wild girl up close. The girl looks familiar but Liz can’t place why. Later, going through old photos, Liz realizes the wild girl has her mother’s face. The girl gives Liz a dress to wear to the costume parade. It’s the color of flowing honey.

Scene: Dressing for the parade, Liz puts on the dress. The color, honey, reminds her of the bee necklace. Even though feels it should be fragile and looks odd, she decides to wear it. She doesn’t find the parade she’s looking for but ends up in some kind of fairy parade. It’s wilder, more chaotic, than she’d expect. The wild girl is there as well. The fairies all go through a portal, vanishing into the light, but the wild girl doesn’t. She sits by it but doesn’t go through. Liz gives the girl the bee necklace, which have to make clear is the power source the girl (fae) had given up ages ago. Liz’ mother shut down after getting the gift, binding the power and thus keeping the wild girl here. But the necklace isn’t enough. I’m not sure what scene the resolution would appear in. It would tie Liz returning to her dream, to studying fairy tales, and that being what unbinds the power and allows the wild girl to return to the fairy realm.


	29. F' You

“Fuck you.” Richard’s words held so little venom that he might as well not have sworn at all. 

“I’m not saying we should dash in and save the dear boy for my sake. I’m just saying that letting such an ass go to waste is a crying shame. If nothing else he could make that horrific scraping that’s come to replace bathing almost endurable.”

“The ass has already gone to waste, Anders, or haven’t you vidded the ritual yet?”

“Ritual? Was he bound to a stone altar, muscles bulging as he struggled to escape?”

“Spare us your fantasies.” Richard cited the regulations as if reading them. “All academics involved in the recommendation process are required to review any and all relevant materials.”

“But they’re boring. What do I care from tracking some old man into the desert even if he does, eventually, find a trickle of water?”

“Those trickles are important.”

“Yes, yes, they might lead us to aquifers, to enough water so that one of us could take a decent bath rather than scrape dirt off and then sponge clean, well cleanish. And besides, I’m sure Chowdry down in water reclamation has gone through it with a tooth and comb. Can’t you just mark the relevant bits?”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Already done. Want the background?”

“If it means I’ll have to watch less, then yes.”

“The Verdathi people are a tribe living near the edge of the Anez mountains. Remnants from the great cities of Shartha and Ctin, they’ve devolved to a tribal state in an impressively short amount of time, less than five generations. The Zagai is chosen from the young men of the tribe. He’s said to be the best of them, most virile, best hunter, that sort of thing although he doesn’t hunt once he’s been chosen. He’s made king for a year, given more food, can have any woman he wants, that sort of thing.”

“Any woman? What a waste. And I suppose at the end of the year he’s killed? Even more of a waste.”

“The ritual is one of the vid segments you need to watch. I’ve sent you the links.”

The first link brings him to a spot almost seventy-six hours into the vids. Dikkon, having set a tracking vid on one of the tribal elders, had set out to verify a water source. Before he could close in, he’d found himself surrounded, spears pointed directly at him. The recorder had caught it all: the first spear struck into the sand at his feet, the anger of the tribesmen, Dikkon’s terror as he talked himself out of trouble. Anders relished the look on Dikkon’s face, wondering if the ass had pissed himself. That night, in his personal report vid, Dikkon’s usual carelessness had taken over. “Lord, I thought they’d almost wanted to kill me.” Anders almost regretted that they hadn’t. He could have avoided the whole set of vids if an anthro had been killed in situ. The army would have gone in, tortured the well locations out of the locals, and, oops, left them to die accidental like.   
If the first link location was almost delightful in its near threat to Dikkon, the second was one of the most horrific things Anders had ever seen. The cutie who’d been made king for a year had been brought into a ritual space. Right, this must be the sacrifice then. Anders leaned in, curious how it would take place. The ritual space was a large circle in the sand, easily twenty feet across. It would represent the land, of course, as this ritual was meant as sympathetic magic to draw water to the land. The cutie started dancing, wandering all across the circle. As he came close to the edge one of the bystanders, the whole tribe stood around, flashed a knife and slashed across the skin. Anders expected someone to cry foul but the cutie kept dancing. Anders shook his head, that couldn’t be right, but the blood was visibly dripping down the cutie’s torso and onto the sand. Nobody was speaking up so it had to be part of the ritual. Cutie danced close to the edge again. There was another cut and then later another and another. The young man kept dancing although his skin and the sand were both soaked by a thin layer of blood. The man staggered but kept moving. He was nearly dead and knives continued to slash. When he fell to the ground, there was little sand in the circle visible through the blood. The crowd let out a great cheer. Anders ran for the bathroom. 

When he was done, Anders wiped his mouth carefully. Gods, what was wrong with those people? Kink was one thing but covering sands with blood? That was just disgusting. He found Richards waiting for him. “What the hell was that?”

“Too much for you, Anders dear?”

“You didn’t need me to watch that. Obviously the whole tribe is a level seven on the homicidal scale. The Council doesn’t need a vote. They should have been expunged immediately after that ritual.”

“The Council wants the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, as well you know. You remember that fiasco with that little tribe in Delacio. One child survived, made her way to civilization, and what an uproar! How could our benevolent government kill such innocents? As if they wouldn’t have been screaming even more if we hadn’t gotten the water that tribe had been surviving on. Anyway, we now need proof that these tribes are not nice people.”

“Yes, yes, I understand that, but I didn’t need to view that proof with my very own eyes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I was going for ... the government killing tribes for their water (worldwide drought) parallels the tribe killing the young man in sympathetic magic ritual to call down rain. Both are sacrificing others to survive: the tribe sacrificing one of its young men and the government (city culture) sacrificing tribes for their water. 
> 
> Possibly start with signs of drought: fountains turned off, lawns brown, in labs there are signs to not waste water. Roman-style scraping off of dirt has replaced bathing.
> 
> Anthropologists, hired by government, sent to poor and tribal areas to determine where these people store / get water so it can be then taken for city / rich use. At first these people had been left to die after their resources taken but public opinion came down on those actions and now evidence of crimes looked for as reasons to kill off poorer peoples before taking their resources.


	30. Chapter 30

More of a summary than a story: Aboriginal grouping where men and women control different domains but are equal. Arrival of the white man who will only trade with the men which causes women to lose power. PoV is an old woman who recalls when all were equal. She's faced with a loss of women's power but, as she's past menopause, she can be considered as a man in terms of group dynamics. She chooses the power and joins the elders as a man. So idea is she's gaining personal power but by supporting the system/dynamic that gives women less.


	31. Minoan priestess story

 

Legends tell of lost Atlantis, the shining jewel of the sea. 

High Priestess - ritual - time of transition ; crone, guardian of gateway to watch over (goddess parallel to Hecate?) 

High Priestess swirls out of temple, assistant scurrying behind to talk of refugees fleeing the capitol island. There is crowding, lack of food. City crowded. Homeless line the streets and temple priestesses working to find homes for all

Dinner at home with HP’s sister (governor? would rule be religious or split up into secular?). They use dinner to discuss refugee issue. HP’s husband, daughter (teen) and two sons (younger). In this society, men travel (ships) and husband has just returned with a boatload of refugees. He’s leaving again the next morning. Thera can’t hold more refugees and they are discussing sending next boatloads to the continent but many of their coastal cities have fallen to barbarian (patriarchal) invaders. 

Not sure what else. Eventually earthquake hits Thera. City crumbling. Rush for ships. Not enough room to save everyone. HP stays back to make room for children. Is told priestesses need to go to support religion / faith. She replies that their religion, even if does die off, will come back. Like flower that dies in the winter and returns in the spring as possible image. 


	32. about a curse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * about a curse - I was thinking of poverty as a curse in this case 
>   * condign 
>   * encounter between fact and desire / what want vs. what is 
>   * frittering time away 
> 


Okay, more notes than a story. With moving toward fixing house to sell, I just can't get up the motivation to write original stories lately. ;-(

Guy grew up poorer side of middle-class in a neighborhood where most everyone else had more than he did. Parents divorced, living with mother, father there but doesn't put anything extra into the mother's budget. Spaghetti for dinner. Ground turkey rather than ground beef. All his friends have nicer clothes as he gets older. Friend has pool; his family doesn't. Not terribly poor but the discrepancy has left him feeling deprived.

My basis for this characters is J. She got job in high-school so could buy her own dressier clothes and never wore the same outfit twice to a party. Specifically think of her at that Disney trip A paid for. J ran around taking her kids to what they wanted to do (autographs), leaving A to either trail behind or do what she wanted without J and the kids. According to her husband, J was doing that because she'd felt deprived as a kid and wanted her kids to have what she didn't. That's this guy, whatever I choose to name him. Had a stable background with the basics provided, but angry because feels deprived.

He's smart enough and ambitious enough to get a scholarship to a really good school but it doesn't take care of all his financial needs so while the rich kids are playing (frat boys), he has to work to support himself. This leaves him feeling isolated but he does make enough connections and does well enough in school to get a good job after. He semi-dates the boss' daughter for a bit - he's more serious than she is - and feels rejected when she leaves him from someone from her social class. The woman he marries is a second choice as far as he's concerned. The births of his daughters lead to a period where he does feel that he has it all but as they grow older he feels more isolated because they tell him he doesn't fit in. "You just don't get it, Dad. You never have." Final scene -> graduation party for youngest daughter. It's something of a wild scene in his backyard. There are people playing with flaming poi, etc. As he's standing alone on the deck, one person presenting with a Jedi sword, glowing light saber. This image is supposed to be the angel with a flaming sword keeping humanity outside of Eden. My character feels frozen to the deck because he doesn't get why someone'd be in his back yard playing with a glowing light saber. His wife joins him on the deck and puts her arm through his.

Truth vs. desire: there should be incidents where he tries but fails to fit in and he doesn't know what he's getting wrong.


	33. Ashes, Ashes / As Easy as Adopting a Kitten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: set 100 years in future
> 
> For this one, I thought on stories I'd read:  
> 
> 
> *   
> [A Salvaging of Ghosts](http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-salvaging-of-ghosts/) by Alliette de Bodard - idea of grieving mother who find able to move on  
> 
> * comic set after 9-11 where old woman, finding dog in the rubble, gets a new lease on life  
> 
> * The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - setting
> 
>  **Variant** : From the line, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, "adopting a child was as easy as adopting a kitten". In the chaos after the bombing, she finds a child whose mother has died and starts taking care of the girl. Family shows up and her life becomes intertwined with theirs in complex ways. 
> 
> Note: next year, rather than first drafts, I'm going to make my goal finished stories but also give myself more time to work on them!

“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” The bombing of San Diego on the 29th of July 2116 by what was left of the People’s Republic of China left in its wake a nuclear no-go zone and a world of terrified people. Liling Bao White, who’d taken her husband’s name upon marriage and in college had changed her given name to Lily, as a child of immigrants and an immigrant herself - she’d been three when her parents had fled their native land - was among the first set of people round up when the US decided to act against foreign terrorists on its sovereign soil Her husband, Harry, of European ancestry, had been able to remove himself, but not his family, from the conscript list. 

“It’ll be better,” he said, giving their daughter, Annie a hug. “From the outside, I can work to get you out. From in here, I can do nothing.” In here was something of a misnomer. They’d been crowded into a football stadium - the only space large enough with limited exit points to detain them. After a quick hug, Harry rushed out of the stadium as quick as the guards would let him, as if afraid they’d keep him there if he moved too slowly. Lily never saw him again. 

After weeks of terrified stories shared amongst themselves - firing squad, concentration camps, gas ovens - the people were shuttled up to the moon, long since used as a penal colony. Lily got one final message out to her husband. “If you don’t get us out soon, it’ll be too late.” The difference in gravity would ruin any chances for her and little Anne to return. She could make it back safely after years at the lower gravity but Anne, whose body was still developing, would be ruined for life at a higher gravity after only eight or nine months. 

Annie, already ill from the dysentery running through the camp, died on the trip. Lily sat there, not moving, holding Annie’s body for days until it was wrenched from her arms after they’d arrived on the moon. There was no funeral, just taking her child further and further away as two attendants held her screaming self back. 

Because she was a doctor, Lily was assigned to work in the prison hospital. New transportees, whether actual prisoners or not, were assigned to barracks for a six month adjustment period. Part of the care included medical covered by local residents. Prisoners, political transportees, and other non-desirables tended to not include high levels of medical training. Lily sat on a bench, her eyes blind to the human misery, and cried for her child.

After three days, she was moved to food services. Scooping out food for transportees required no thought. Just her speed. Her life moved between work, sleep, and vids provided on a large screen. After six months, moved to an apartment and given a job at recyling center. She didn’t care as long as she didn’t have to think.

okay, summing up at this point. As in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, rebelling against authority. Even Lily notices: graffiti on walls, liberty caps - everyone knows what they mean. Co-worker shows her poem in local paper, sentiment is that Luna, place of exile, has become beloved home. Lily disagrees. For her, Luna is a place of exile. If never sent here child would never have died. 

Bombing from authority shakes her out of her depression. With refugees who’d survived, they are gathered together in large space. Lily wants to shut down but she sees injured children and empathy brings her out of herself. She works with what’s available to treat people who’ve been injured.


	34. Hospice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't know where I have my prompts listed, but one of them was "About loneliness"

Again a summary because I have that whole life falling apart thing going on. Two versions of story. Basis is something Mark once told me. When he'd been volunteering at hospice, there was a man who had mental retardation whose wife was dying. After she'd passed, he, crying, kept telling Mark that the sex was great. Mark said that as he understood it, that was the only way the man knew to say he loved her.

First version from the woman's PoV. She married him basically for financial support. Because of his disability, he got regular money and could take care of her. She would think she didn't love him but the story would show her feelings of affection and caring. For example, she feels nostalgic about how he would discuss the money he'd saved with coupons after each grocery trip. At the end, he keeps saying the sex was great and she replies that she loves him even though she thinks she didn't. 

Second version from PoV of volunteer at the hospice. Shocked and upset that the only thing the man can say is that the sex was great. When the woman says "I love you too", the volunteer sees the conversation in a whole new light and realizes that they had a connection that he, the volunteer, didn't have in his own life.


	35. Fall of Crete

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Features a real recent newspaper article - recent earthquakes in Italy reminded me that earthquakes were supposed to have destroyed the last bastion of woman-centered civilization 
> 
> I also looked at the quote “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.” But I was thinking that those who ignore current events, what’s going on around them, are also condemned to repeat their past.

Again, two variants.

 **First** : Atlantis as a kingdom ruled by women. I brought in the idea that women-centered food gathering (hunter-gatherers and in areas where plowing not possible) kept power in the hands of women. As this island kingdom fell to earthquakes, the two princesses sent to live with their aunt on the mainland. She, married to a king, lives in a patriarchal society.

The patriarchal kingdom’s differences

  * plowing - seen as rape of the land by youngest princess?
  * poverty - don’t have in matriarchal / egalitarian society
  * rape - a younger prince - engaged to eldest daughter to legitimize his rule of fallen kingdom she’s heir to - attacks serving women and younger princess



Three different cultures

  * matriarchy - fallen in an earthquake, it’s citizens are either fled, dead, or barely surviving
  * patriarchy
  * Amazons - something of a response to patriarchy. When plowing came to this culture, the women kept control of food by plowing themselves. Men watch the children



Patriarchal kingdom lays claim to the fallen matriarchal islands by marrying younger son to heir. So the islands basically become a colony of the kingdom. The prince and heir sent back to islands with food and supplies to bring it back to a viable kingdom. She agrees to marry him, even though he’s a brute, because the kingdom will colonize anyway and as the queen she has some ability to protect the survivors. However, given that the prince had attacked her sister, she arranges with Amazons, distant relatives and in the kingdom for the wedding, to take her sister with them. The younger sister says she’ll lead Amazons to free the islands from the kingdom. The elder sister doesn’t believe it’s possible and wishes she were going with them.

 **Second** : Time travel proves existence of a matriarchy and that it really was a golden age. That does not change anything in the present (story present). I’m not sure how to make this a story. Perhaps a time traveller refuses to return to the present? She wants to stay in that golden age, but time travel regulations wont allow it so “time cops” sent after her.


	36. Raven and Cat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * animal PoV 
>   * Hopi 
> 


Two separate ideas:  
 **First** :   
PoV is Raven as in a Charles deLint immortal, um, spirit kind of a power but also manifests in the physical world? I don’t know what to call them. Has been here before humanity appeared. Was interested in how humanity used sticks to kill animals. Gave it a try but beaks is more effective. Has been around from first of humanity until after humanity killed selves. So the idea is impermanence and transience of human activity. Final bit -> mankind came and mankind went. Raven worked through the rubble and found baubles he’d seen men wearing over their eyes. He pushed out the broken glass and flew away with the trinket. Mankind might come and go, but at least they left behind shiny trinkets. 

**Second** :   
PoV a cat, like my Mom’s cat Jessica who’d try and try to get out of the house but then she’d sit by the door crying because outside was too scary. Once safe back inside, she’d bond with her human for a bit but then get curious about the outside again. 

I’m not sure how much of a story it’d make but I’m seeing it as a metaphor for my life. I’m trying to change careers. I’m trying to sell my house. I’m trying to move on to a new job, a new home, a new life, but I keep stalling.


	37. bouncing ball

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts
> 
>   * about a scientific discovery 
>   * bouncy ball 
> 

> 
> After I'd thought the plot through, I was thinking that there's no character arc, that it's more of a protest story, we're not equal yet kind of a thing. But so's [The Yellow Wallpaper](https://www.nlm.nih.gov/literatureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf). Not that I'm comparing my story favorably to that one. On the other hand, The Yellow Wallpaper does have a character arc. It's a descent into madness. 
> 
> This may have come about because I've been watching Blue Bloods. I needed a counter to the misogyny.

Even with a nanny, a mother's expected to spend time with her child. "Sam, I've finished the subether experiments. The data's on the server."

Sam replied with a non-committal sound, more of a hmmm than a grunt, but didn't look up. Lalita couldn't be sue he'd heard her, but he'd know where to find the data.

 **Scene** : emphasize she's caught up in the technical details of the problem which probably either FTL or wormholes. At home she plays ball with her kid (who's four or fiveish). The kid tosses a bouncy ball really high and as Lalita watches the height of the bounces decrease with each hit to the ground, she has an epiphany. 

**Scene** : at lab, she's explaining epiphany to husband. 

**Scene** : one or the other 1) awards ceremony - award going to the two of them but make it clear Samesh Chandra is considered the real genius and he's giving acceptance 2) The texbooks say Samesh Chandra invented X. Sometimes they mention that his wife helped. Even in teh 24th century, the accolades go to the man.


	38. Mortgatge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts:
> 
>   * set on another planet 
>   * batting a thousand - oops, I'd thought "battling a hundred / thousand" i.e. in over head 
> 


Hard-luck humor story. Couple bought a planet and are tying to make a go of it. Out of nowhere animals, sort of like tribbles in cuteness and eating everything but like cicadas in that they show up once every certain number of years, pop up and eat everything in sight. Couple thinks they are ruined. Can’t get rid of the planet and mortgage piling up. No buyers. They’re stuck with it. 

But then idea to sell tribbles as pets off-world. Except that authorizes say no. These things eat and reproduce at amazing rate; can’t take off world. Someone who knows some history comes up with idea to sell them as basis for luxury clothing; creatures of furry and soft; historically that has sold well. They’re a bit freaked by idea of using something once living as clothing but agree. Robots do the work. The fur sells like wildfire and they pay off bill for planet, but someone figures out fur from once-living animals. People haven’t worn fur, leather, etc. for generations. There’s a backlash and couple sued right and left. They use the planet to pay off their creditors and get rid of it that way. 

NB: I’m not sure I’d be able to make this story appropriately humorous.


	39. Candy gram

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt of "Only one character" reminded me of a story I wrote back in 2008. The prompt for that was: The last man on earth sits alone in a room. There's a knock on the door.

When the creatures first attacked, people fled the coasts. No one had expected that a sea-based life-form could strike further inland. Cities, any place where people congregated, were unsafe. 

Joanna sits alone in the room. It isn’t a pretty room. The room serves one purpose: to keep her alive. The windows are covered by boards. A table has been turned over on its side in case someone comes to this cabin, hidden far in the woods, looking to steal her food. A cage runs the length of the far wall. Six harpoons and a gun to shoot them from hang on that wall. 

Joanna hasn’t seen or heard another person in six months and she likes it that way. In the mayhem that followed the attacks, man turned on man in the chaos and struggle to survive. Joanna has come to enjoy the quiet.

In the early evening silence, when Joanne’s just settled down to read Cherie Priest’s Maplecroft for the twenty-third time, there’s a knock on the door. Joanna dives behind the table and draws out her pistol. “Who is it?”

“Pizza delivery.”

Shit. This was it. Joanna calls out again. The words, the test, almost form a ritual of identification. “I didn’t order a pizza.”

There’s a pause, a long one, as if someone were taking the time to think. “Candy gram.”

“Do we even do that anymore?”

As quietly as she can, Joanna races into the cage and locks the door behind her. The harpoon gun, an old friend, feels right in her hands. 

“Plumber, ma’am.”

There’s an outhouse around back. No call for a plumber. “Oh, well, okay then. Come on in.” Her hand pulls a latch to open the front door. 

The creature rushes in and all Joanna can see are teeth, so many teeth. The harpoon springs from the gun and lands with a thud. The creature throws itself at the bars. Joanna wants so shrink back but she can’t, not if she wants to live. If she doesn’t kill it quickly enough, it could break through even marine grade aluminum. She shoots again. 

Joanna doesn’t step out of the cage until she’s shot four harpoons and has waited a good half-hour after it has stopped twitching. 

You can’t be too careful with land sharks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was surprised, after writing the first story back in 2008, to learn that not everyone got the land shark reference. Unfortunately there are no skits of it up on youtube, so [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Shark_\(Saturday_Night_Live\))'s a Wikipedia article on the subject.


	40. seeing ghosts

Margherita, barely thirteen, dress indicates time-frame of Borgia pope or close to it> saw her first ghost in the garden, more of a park really, behind her family’s villa. She recognized the ghost from a portrait hanging . had died in childbirth two years before Margherita had been born. The host had been fifteen when she’d died although she looked younger.

“You shouldn’t listen to Lucretia you know.” had first appeared about a week earlier. She spoke with that appalling primness all new wives, even those who’d been the wildest girls, seemed to attain in their first year of marriage. “If you let her lead you astray, you’ll ruin your reputation. No respectable man will have you.” 

Margherita knew Lucretia would say that she didn’t want a respectable man, but Margherita wasn’t so certain what she wanted for herself. She’d caught Nico watching her before church the previous Sunday and the look had raised thoughts in her head that had been anything but fitting for a church service, or so would have said if she could have read Margherita’s mind. Nico was respectable enough though. The son of a merchant just as she was the daughter of a merchant. He’d make a goodly enough match.

“Lucretia’s no trouble.”

“She’s been kissing that boy, and I think she’s ready to do more than just kiss. If she gets herself in trouble, people’ll think worse of you for being her friend.”

Margherita still didn’t know if the ghost was real or if she was just seeing things, but she surely didn’t need another mother giving her advice. “So? Go bother Lucretia if you care so much.” 

“She’s not my responsibility!”

“And why am I so blessed?”

“Because we’re family. Your behavior, your advancement, reflects on my honor.”

“How do you know Lucretia’s been kissing ? Wouldn’t she stop if you were there?”

“Obviously she couldn’t see me.” 

“How come I can?”

“I don’t know but since you can I will govern your behavior.”

Margherita wasn’t sure she believed in the ghost but Lucretia hadn’t mentioned anything about kissing . Margherita wasn’t even sure Lucretia still liked , but if she did and if she’d been kissing him, then maybe the ghost was real. 

 

Basic idea is that most people can’t see ghosts. A businessman who does uses info from ghosts (ancestors?) against the competition … to the point of murder possibly. His daughter, once she hits puberty, starts seeing ghosts and so he’s teaching her - rather than her brother / his heir who can’t see ghosts - that aspect of the family business with the understanding that her brother will run the business but she’ll help him out. Because of the man he’d killed, the father is assassinated - ghosts didn’t know because the killer had acted on his own and not spoken of it. There’s a lot of bad feeling against the father and now that he’s dead it comes out against the business the brother is trying to run. Seeing that he’s failing, sister goes to someone higher up the food chain (Pope if historical) and convinces him she can see things (Tarot cards? tea leaves? she wouldn’t tell him about the ghosts). Historical Pope (Borgia), his children were his heirs. PoV character comes in as mistress, eventually replacing current, so that her children will also be heirs.

scene: daughter mentions ghosts -> punished by mother (see Lady Jane); She’s told to never speak of such things.  
scene: father tells her he can see ghosts and that he gets business info about what his competitors are up to. Shows daughter how to work it  
scene: father killed by a man he’d ruined  
scene: brother take over business  
scene: father’s enemies are ruining business  
scene: gets outside help

NB: Not sure I like the Pope idea. Maybe make it more modern.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: romance that ends in tragedy
> 
>  
> 
> Wish I had time to take a stab at writing it but I'm busy pulling my life back together

I was thinking of Lady Jane, the movie that is. There's a scene where Queen Mary says she loves the man she'll marry, Philip II of Spain. For him though, I'm thinking it would have been a political match and that she would have know he didn't love her. Hence the tragedy.


	42. Scene from Lotus remix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Na No Wri Mo, I'm planning to rework my unfinished BtVS fanfic [Lotus in Muddy Water](http://archiveofourown.org/series/41065) series. For tragedy that turns into a romance, I took a scene towards the end, after Faith has fallen in the final battle.

Faith found herself surrounded by a light so bright that she tried to raise an arm against it, tried and failed. She had no arms. Not only that, she had no body. She scanned the area, and even as she looked she wondered how she could see without eyes, and saw nothing but light. “What the fuck?”

“And how the hell am I speaking without a mouth?”

Ahead of her - although what was ahead in this vast emptiness? - a distortion appeared in the light, something like a shadow, and then it became a shadow or more accurately a silhouette. As shadows shifted into features, she saw a face she recognized. “Andy?”

The light faded leaving them standing in moonlight on the cliffs where they’d first met. Well, Andy was standing. She still didn’t have a body. The diamond Andy wore in his ear seemed to shine with its own light. His pale blue eyes, darkened by the lack of light, seemed almost brown, but that face and the smile on those full lips, she had no doubt it was him. 

“Hey, Faith.” The grin that welcomed her so intimately that she felt herself tingling even though she had nothing to tingle with. 

“Hey, yourself.” She wanted to reach out to him. It seemed hardly possible that he was there, on the cliffs with her. The last thing she remembered … There’s been a knife in her gut and Claire crying. They’d closed the portal but it seems she’d paid the price. “Is this Hell?”

His jaw dropped. The night sky, rich with stars even with the light of a full moon, flashed into a bright whiteness. “No. No! Of course not.”

“But I …” She couldn’t say she’d died.

“You.” He paused as if searching for a world that wouldn’t freak her too much. Too late for that. “You fell.” 

“Fell. Down a rabbit hole? This ain’t Wonderland.”

His face took on that abashed look that pretty boys were so good at and damn but she wanted to kiss him. “This, well, this is what’s next.” He paused for a moment and when he spoke again his words came out in a rush. “For some people.” 

That slightly decaying scent coming from the salt water, the roar of the waves, the spray of water crashing off the rocks, they felt real but she was beginning to suspect the scene wasn’t. “So if this isn’t Hell … Heaven?”

“It’s not that black and white.” 

“Hey, was alive. Now.” She paused and felt as if she’d taken in and released a deep breath. “What’s to be black and white about?”

“Do you remember how I intervened in the battle?”

“You mean that part where you grew great, big, fluffy wings?” He’d frigging flown across that island and torn into those demons that’s been threatening … “Hey, is Johnny okay?”

“He’s fine. They’re all fine.”

Something in the way he’d said “they” forced the words out of her. “But I’m dead, right?” 

“Sort of.”

“I’ve got this whole no body thing going on. I think that’s more than sort of dead. What am I? A ghost?”

Andy shook his head. “Not a ghost. You’re like me.”

“Crap, you mean I’m a demon? How the hell’d that happen?”

The world flashed to light again, not just the sky but the rocks beneath them and the sea even lower down. “You thought I was a demon?”

If she had arms, she’d cross them. “What was I supposed to think? You had that supernatural strength thing going, and I know you’re not a Slayer. She flashed on those wings again, white. almost glowing, as pure as the feathers of a swan. “Oh, kill me now. You’re an angel?”

His grin came back. “No, but I’ve played one on tv.”

“Oh, thank God. My rep couldn’t have handled an angel as a boyfriend.”

“A demon’s okay but an angel not so much?”

“I’ve never been up to that goody two-shoes crap.” 

“The word you’re looking for is bodhisattva.” 

“Say what? Bodhisattva?”

“It’s the closest word in any human tongue to describe what I am … what we are. The long and the short? We’ve died and chosen to come back and help.”

“Chose? I don’t remember any choosing, and, hey, wait a minute. You were there to help? Because I remember fighting demons and fighting the Council and there was a distinct lack of helping coming from you.” 

“The balance must be maintained. I’f I’d intervened, I’d have been driven from the physical plane.” Faith felt herself tapping a foot she didn’t have, and maybe he got that because he went on. “I would have been forced from the earth. I wouldn’t have been able to stay with you.”

She’d thought they weren’t where they seemed to be but she didn’t want to look that closely at that yet. “And yet you fought in that last battle and here you are, with me.”

“In creating the portal, the demons created an imbalance.” He shrugged. “I got off with a light sentence.”

“So this is prison then, rather than Heaven or Hell.” The words rattled off her lips before she’d stopped to think that if this was prison he might not want to talk about it. 

“This? Is Maya. Illusion.” He didn’t even pull out a wand or say abracadabra or anything but the world changed around them. They’d found a summerhouse, abandoned for the winter, and had dodged in out of the rain. Faith hadn’t expected such a white hat to know how to pick a lock but Andy’d gotten them inside as if the lock wasn’t even there. They hadn’t turned on the lights. In the darkness, she’d felt an intimacy she’d never had allowed herself if she’d been able to see him clearly. They were in that room again only now there were flames in the fireplace, a flickering light that seemed to anchor her to the room.

He held a hand out to her. Even in the limited light of the fire, she felt vulnerable and glad she couldn’t take his hand in hers. 

“We can take on physical form. You can have a body again. It just takes getting used to.”

“I can be me again if I just … what? Clap my hands for Tinkerbell?”

“Human form’s difficult. It’s easier to start with something simpler. Think of a rock.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I”m not coming back as a rock.”

He was holding out both hands as if afraid she’d take a flit. “It doesn’t have to be a rock. Pick something. Anything you have an affinity for. What’s your favorite thing?”

Even without a mouth, she could feel herself smirking. “Well, you are rocking those abs. And that ass, if I could reach out and grab it, well, let’s just say you wouldn’t be wearing those jeans long.”

She can see the lust flashing in his answering grin. “It’s gonna take you practice to get there. The sooner you start, the sooner you get my clothes off. Favorite object - not living. Come on, you can tell me.”

Faith thought about closing her eyes and even though she didn’t have eyes the world went dark, and in that darkness she saw the r’cal, the dagger she’d carried into the final battle. This first time she’d seen it, she’d know the dagger as hers. The blade, darker than Andy’s skin, had curves that matched her own, and the ivory handle, as bright as flashing teeth, oh that was hers, hers to take and hers to hold. 

She opened her eyes and plummeted to the ground. “I’m a dagger?”

“You’re so very clever,” he said. “Getting it on the first try. I’d be embarrassed to tell you how long it took me and I was just trying for a rock.”

As his thumb brushed across her blade, she felt the light touch as a caress. She’d have shivered if she could. “So I’m clever. Great. How long before I’m human and can touch you back?”


	43. Have You Met Lydia?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Remake of a recent movie

I mainly watch DVDs of old movies so that whole based on a **recent** movie wasn't going to work for me. I ended up with [The Fisher King](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fisher_King) from Lydia's PoV. 

She's a romance reader with no romance in her life. She's based, if I remember Grail Lore correctly, on a story of maiden guardians of wells who were raped. She'd represent one of the children. There's a lostness to her that parallels their story. 

I think the romance she's reading would have parallels to her story. It might be based off of Sleeping Beauty because it could parallel to Parry's coma. 

So she's feeling hopeless and this man comes into her life. After a dinner there are those memorable lines from the movie where she says she'll invite him in and it'll be wonderful at first but he won't be able to stay in the morning and she'll wait for him to call and keep dying inside when he doesn't. Parry convinces her he loves her but doesn't stay. He has a breakdown and is in a coma before morning. So she, my character, has to choose: does she believe he loves her or not? She chooses to believe he does and visits him at the hospital but she almost welcomes his coma because it means she can believe he loves her. If he wakes, she might learn otherwise. Of course he does wake and there's some trepidation but then happily ever after.


	44. 1964

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: takes place the year I was born

There's a story my aunt Alice tells of watching a live showing of the Beatles on tv. She's commenting about one of the squealing girls - "what the hell does she think she's doing throwing herself at them like that?" - when she realizes she's talking about herself. 

So the story would be that she gets into the first live showing in the US with a friend and later sees it on tv. Subplot -> she lied to her parents about where she was and then when they see it's her on tv she gets into trouble. The ending line would be that whatever punishment was totally worth it to get to see the Beatles.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't expect these to be good. The point is more to get myself writing original fic. I can work on good later.
> 
>  
> 
> Prompts:  
> 1\. A story entitled “A New Beginning”.  
> 2\. A story about rising to a challenge.  
> 3\. A retelling of a fairytale.  
> 4\. A story about three siblings.  
> 5\. A story set in London.  
> 6\. A story about finding something that has been lost.  
> 7\. A story about a journey.  
> 8\. A story set during a war.  
> 9\. A creepy story.  
> 10\. A story featuring a countdown.  
> 11\. A story set at a full moon.  
> 12\. A story about a contest or competition.  
> 13\. A story that takes place entirely inside a vehicle.  
> 14\. A story from a villain’s perspective.  
> 15\. A story set at a concert or festival.  
> 16\. A story that begins with a gunshot.  
> 17\. A story set in a country you’ve never been to.  
> 18\. A story about a historical figure.  
> 19\. A story set in a theatre.  
> 20\. A story written in 2nd person narrative.  
> 21\. A story set on another planet.  
> 22\. A story written from the perspective of someone dead/undead  
> 23\. A story about a birthday.  
> 24\. A story that ends on a cliffhanger.  
> 25\. A story set at the summer solstice.  
> 26\. A story about nostalgia.  
> 27\. A story that features a song or poem.  
> 28\. A story that ends at sunrise.  
> 29\. A story opening with the words “F*** you!”  
> 30\. A story about a magical object.  
> 31\. A story set at sea.  
> 32\. A story about a curse.  
> 33\. A story set 100 years in the future.  
> 34\. A story about loneliness.  
> 35\. A story that features a real recent newspaper article.  
> 36\. A story written from an animal’s perspective.  
> 37\. A story about a scientific discovery.  
> 38\. A story set on another planet.  
> 39\. A story with only one character.  
> 40\. A story about a secret.  
> 41\. A romance that ends in tragedy.  
> 42\. A tragedy that ends in romance.  
> 43\. A retelling of a recent Hollywood movie.  
> 44\. A story that takes place the year you were born.  
> 45\. A story about a near-death experience.  
> 46\. A story about anger.  
> 47\. A story about a magic spell.  
> 48\. A story set in a strange small town.  
> 49\. A story about justice being done.  
> 50\. A creation myth.  
> 51\. A story set at Christmas.  
> 52\. A story entitled “The End”.


End file.
